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(7) SCENE III.

O, Proserpina,
For the flowers now, that, frighted, thou lett'st fall
From Dis's waggon !]

See the passage in Ovid's Metamorphoses, lib. v.

"ut summa vestem laxavit ab ora Collecti flores tunicis cecidere remissis,-"

and the following translation by Shakespeare's contemporary, Golding:

"Neare Enna walles there stands a lake Pergusa is the name, Cayster heareth not more songs of swannes than doth the same. A wood environs every side the water round about,

And with his leaves as with a veile doth keepe the sun heat out. The boughes doo yeeld a coole fresh aire: the moistnesse of the ground

Yeelds sundrie flowers: continuall spring is all the yeare there found.

While in this garden Proserpine was taking her pastime,
In gathering either violets blew, or lillies white as lime,
And while of maidenlie desire she fild her maund and lap
Endevouring to out-gather her companions there. By hap

Dis spide her, lov'd her, caught her up, and all at once well

neere:

So hastie, hot, and swift a thing is love, as may appeere.
The ladie with a wailing voice afright did often call

Her mother and her waiting maids, but mother most of all.
And as she from the upper part her garment would have rent
By chance she let her lap slip downe, and out the flowers went."

(8) SCENE III.-Poking-sticks of steel.] "These pokingsticks were heated in the fire, and made use of to adjust the plaits of ruffs. In Marston's 'Malcontent' [Act V. Sc. 3] 1604, is the following instance: There is such a deale a pinning these ruffes, when the fine clean fall is worth all; and again, if you should chance to take a nap in an afternoon, your falling band requires no poking-stick to recover his form,' &c. Again, in Middleton's comedy of Blurt, Master Constable' [Act III. Sc. 3], 1602: Your ruff must stand in print; and for that purpose, get poking-sticks with fair long handles, lest they scorch your lily sweating] hands.' Again, in the Second Part of Stubbes's Anatomie of Abuses, 8vo. no date: "They (poking-sticks) be made of yron and steele, and some of brasse, kept as bright as silver, yea some of silver itselfe, and it is well if in processe of time they grow not to be gold. The fashion whereafter they be made, I cannot resemble to any thing so well as to a squirt or a little squibbe which little children used to squirt out water withal; and when they come to starching and setting of their ruffes, then must this instrument be heated in the fire, the better to stiffen the ruffe,' &c."-STEEVENS.

(9) SCENE III.-Of a fish, that appeared upon the coast on Wednesday the fourscore of April, &c.] "The Shakesperian era was the age of ballads, broadsides, and fugitive pieces on all kinds of wonders, which were either gross exaggerations of facts or mere inventions. The present dialogue seems to be a general, not a particular, satire; but it may be curiously illustrated by an early ballad of a fish, copied from the unique exemplar preserved in the Miller collection, entitled, The discription of a rare or rather most monstrous fishe, taken on the east cost of Holland the xvij. of November, anno 1566.' In 1569 was published a prose broadside, containing,- A true description of this marvellous straunge Fishe, which was taken on Thursday was sennight, the 16. day of June, this present month, in the yeare of our Lord God, 1569.-Finis, Qd. C. R.-Imprinted at London, in Fleetstreete, beneath the conduit, at the signe of Saint John Evangelist, by Thomas Colwell.' In 1604 was entered on the books of the Stationers' Company: A strange reporte of a monstrous fish that appeared in the form of a woman, from her waist upward, seene in the sea;' and in May of the same year, a ballad called a ballad of a strange and monstruous fishe seene in the sea on Friday the 17 of Febr. 1603.' In Sir Henry Herbert's office-book, which contains a register of all the shows of London from 1623 to 1642, is 'a licence to Francis Sherret to shew a strange fish for a yeare, from the 10th of Marche, 1635.'"-HALLIWELL.

(10) SCENE III.-Men of hair.] A dance in which the performers were disguised as satyrs, not unusually formed a feature of the entertainment on festival occasions in olden time, and this species of masquerade is connected with a very tragic incident, graphically told by Froissart, which occurred at the French court in 1392:

"It fortuned that, soon after the retaining of the foresaid knight, a marriage was made in the king's house between a young knight of Vermandois and one of the queen's gentlewomen; and because they were both of the king's house, the king's uncles, and other lords, ladies, and damoiselles, made great triumph: there was the Dukes of Orléans, Berry, and Bourgoyne, and their wives, dancing and making great joy. The king made a great supper to the lords and ladies, and the queen kept her estate, desiring every man to be merry and there was a squire of Normandy, called Hogreymen Gensay, he advised to make some pastime. The day of the marriage, which was on a Tuesday before Candlemas, he provided for a mummery against night: he devised six coats made of linen cloth, covered with pitch, and thereon flax-like hair, and had them ready in a chamber. The king put on one of them, and the Earl of Jouy, a young lusty knight, another, and Sir Charles of Poitiers the third, who was son to the earl of Valentenois, and Sir Juan of Foix another, and the son of the Lord Nanthorillet had on the fifth, and the squire himself had on the sixth; and when they were thus arrayed in these sad coats, and sewed fast in them, they seemed like wild woodhouses,* full of hair from the top of the head to the sole of the foot. This device pleased well the French king, and was well content with the squire for it. They were apparelled in these coats secretly in a chamber that no man knew thereof but such as helped them. When Sir Juan of Foix had well devised these coats, he said to the king,-'Sir, command straightly that no man approach near us with any torch or fire, for if the fire fasten in any of these coats, we shall all be burnt without remedy.' The king answered and said,—‘Juan, ye speak well and wisely; it shall be done as ye have devised;' and incontinent sent for an usher of his chamber, commanding him to go into the chamber where the ladies danced, and to command all the varlets holding torches to stand up by the walls, and none of them to approach near to the woodhouses that should come thither to dance. The usher did the king's commandment, which was fulfilled. Soon after the Duke of Orléans entered into the hall, accompanied with four knights and six torches, and knew nothing of the king's commandment for the torches, nor of the mummery that was coming thither, but thought to behold the dancing, and began himself to dance. Therewith the king with the five other came in; they were so disguised in flax that no man knew them: five of them were fastened one to another; the king was loose, and went before and led the device.

"When they entered into the hall every man took so great heed to them that they forgot the torches: the king departed from his company and went to the ladies to sport with them, as youth required, and so passed by the queen and came to the Duchess of Berry, who took and held him by the arm, to know what he was, but the king would not show his name. Then the duchess said, Ye shall not escape me till I know your name. In this mean season great mischief fell on the other, and by reason of the Duke of Orléans; howbeit, it was by ignorance, and against his will, for if he had considered before the mischief that fell, he would not have done as he did for all the good in the world but he was so desirous to know what personages the five were that danced, he put one of the torches that his servant held so near, that the heat of the fire entered into the flax (wherein if fire take there is no remedy), and suddenly was on a bright flame, and so each of them set fire on other; the pitch was so fastened to the linen cloth, and their shirts so dry and fine, and so joining to their flesh, that they began to burn and to cry for help: none durst come near them; they that did burnt their hands by reason of the heat of the pitch: one of them called

* Savages.

Nanthorillet advised him how the botry was thereby; he fled thither, and cast himself into a vessel full of water, wherein they rinsed pots, which saved him, or else he had been dead as the other were; yet he was sore hurt with the fire. When the queen heard the cry that they made, she doubted her of the king, for she knew well that he should be one of the six; therewith she fell into a swoon, and knights and ladies came and comforted her. A piteous noise there was in the hall. The Duchess of Berry delivered the king from that peril, for she did cast over him the train of her gown, and covered him from the fire. The king would have gone from her. Whither will ye go? quoth she; ye see well how your company burns. What are ye? I am the king, quoth he. Haste ye, quoth she, and get you into other apparel, and come to the queen.

And the Duchess of Berry had somewhat comforted her, and had showed her how she should see the king shortly. Therewith the king came to the queen, and as soon as she saw him, for joy she embraced him and fell in a swoon; then she was borne to her chamber, and the king went with her. And the bastard of Foix, who was all on a fire, cried ever with a loud voice, Save the king, save the king! Thus was the king saved. It was happy for him that he went from his company, for else he had been dead without remedy. This great mischief fell thus about midnight in the hall of Saint Powle in Paris, where there was two burnt to death in the place, and other two, the bastard of Foix and the Earl of Jouy, borne to their lodgings, and died within two days after in great misery and pain."

ACT V.

(1) SCENE III.-The ruddiness upon her lip is wet.] However general the distaste for colouring sculpture in the present day, there can be no denying that the practice is of very high antiquity; since the painted low reliefs found in such profusion in the Egyptian tombs are usually assigned to the period B.C. 2400. In those remains there appears to have been the same intention as that shown in the coloured Monumental Effigies of the later middle-ages and the sixteenth century; namely, the production of a perfect and substantial image of the person represented, painted with his natural complexion and apparelled his habit as he lived." In this view of the custom it may be divested of much of its bad taste; especially if we suppose that really eminent artists were frequently employed as well on the painting of the figure as on the modelling and carving it. The later commentators only have taken this the true view of the statue of Hermione; though they have all pointed out the poet's error in representing Giulio Romano as a sculptor. We are inclined to doubt, however, whether Shakespeare committed any mis

in

take upon the subject: when he calls the statue "A piece many years in doing, and now newly performed," he may have remembered that Vasari, Romano's contemporary, has recorded that "over his paintings he sometimes consumed months and even years, until they became wearisome to him." And when he represents this artist as colouring sculpture, he may have recollected the same authority states, that Giulio Romano built a house for himself in Mantua, opposite to the church of St. Barnaba. "The front of this he adorned with a fantastic decoration of coloured stuccoes; causing it at the same time to be painted and adorned with stucco-work within." It will be readily admitted that when the practice of making painted effigy portraits and busts was established, the greatest talent as well as the most inferior might be employed on the colouring; and Vasari adds further, that Giulio Romano would not refuse to set his hand to the most trifling matter, when the object was to do a service to his lord or to give pleasure to his friends.

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CRITICAL OPINIONS ON THE WINTER'S TALE.

"The Winter's Tale' is as appropriately named as 'The Midsummer Night's Dream.' It is one of those tales which are peculiarly calculated to beguile the dreary leisure of a long winter evening, and are even attractive and intelligible to childhood, while, animated by fervent truth in the delineation of character and passion, and invested with the embellishments of poetry, lowering itself, as it were, to the simplicity of the subject, they transport even manhood back to the golden age of imagination. The calculation of probabilities has nothing to do with such wonderful and fleeting adventures, when all end at last in universal joy: and, accordingly, Shakspeare has here taken the greatest licence of anachronisms and geographical errors; not to mention other incongruities, he opens a free navigation between Sicily and Bohemia, makes Giulio Romano the contemporary of the Delphic oracle. The piece divides itself in some degree into two plays. Leontes becomes suddenly jealous of his royal bosom-friend Polyxenes, who is on a visit to his court; makes an attempt on his life, from which Polyxenes only saves himself by a clandestine flight ;-Hermione, suspected of infidelity, is thrown into prison, and the daughter which she there brings into the world is exposed on a remote coast ;-the accused queen, declared innocent by the oracle, on learning that her infant son has pined to death on her account, falls down in a swoon, and is mourned as dead by her husband, who becomes sensible, when too late, of his error: all this makes up the first three acts. The last two are separated from these by a chasm of sixteen years; but the foregoing tragical catastrophe was only apparent, and this serves to connect the two parts. The princess, who has been exposed on the coast of Polyxenes' kingdom, grows up among low shepherds ; but her tender beauty, her noble manners, and elevation of sentiment, bespeak her descent; the Crown Prince Florizel, in the course of his hawking, falls in with her, becomes enamoured, and courts her in the disguise of a shepherd; at a rural entertainment Polyxenes discovers their attachment, and breaks out into a violent rage; the two lovers seek refuge from his persecutions at the court of Leontes in Sicily, where the discovery and general reconciliation take place. Lastly, when Leontes beholds, as he imagines, the statue of his lost wife, it descends from the niche: it is she herself, the still living Hermione, who has kept herself so long concealed; and the piece ends with universal rejoicing. The jealousy of Leontes is not, like that of Othello, developed through all its causes, symptoms, and variations; it is brought forward at once full grown and mature, and is portrayed as a distempered frenzy. It is a passion whose effects the spectator is more concerned with than its origin, and which does not produce the catastrophe, but merely ties the knot of the piece. In fact, the poet might perhaps have wished slightly to indicate that Hermione, though virtuous, was too warm in her efforts to please Polyxenes; and it appears as if this germ of inclination first attained its proper maturity in their children. Nothing can be more fresh and youthful, nothing at once so ideally pastoral and princely, as the love of Florizel and Perdita; of the prince, whom love converts into a voluntary shepherd; and the princess, who betrays her exalted origin without knowing it, and in whose hands nosegays become crowns. Shakspeare has never hesitated to place ideal poetry side by side of the most vulgar prose: and in the world of reality also this is generally the case. Perdita's foster-father and his son are both made simple boors, that we may the more distinctly see how all that ennobles her belongs only to herself. Autolycus, the merry pedlar and pickpocket, so inimitably portrayed, is necessary to complete the rustic feast, which Perdita on her part seems to render meet for an assemblage of gods in disguise."SCHLEGEL.

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