him with Cleomenes, Dion, Paulina, and others. Such expiation as sixteen years of suffering could make for wrong he has made. In vain his courtiers urge him to forget the evil he had wrought. His

remembrance of his chief victim is too vivid for that—his loss too terrible in having

"Destroy'd the sweet'st companion that e'er man Bred his hopes out of."

The thought of Mamillius, too, haunts him, and when Paulina makes an allusion to the boy, he implores her to spare him. "Thou know'st," he tells her, "he dies to me again when talked of," and warns her, that her words may "bring him to consider that, which may unfurnish him of reason." Paulina, his sharpest monitress in his hours of frenzy, has stood loyally by him in his affliction. "Oh grave and good Paulina, the comfort I have had of thee!" he exclaims in the fulness of his heart, at a time when, unknown to him, she is preparing for him a solace beyond all he could have dreamed of; and we can see that, while she has sustained him by her sympathy, she has strengthened him by her vigorous judgment, on which he has wisely been fain to lean.

When he is importuned by his courtiers to make a second marriage and give an heir to the throne, Paulina stands alone in maintaining that this must not be, reminding them that the oracle had declared that he should have no heir till his lost child was found. Her argument prevails. "Oh," says Leontes,

It is here the first hint is given that Hermione is still alive. How this could be, and how the secret could have been so well kept, Shakespeare gives no hint. One is thus driven to work out the problem for one's self. My view has been always this. The deathlike trance into which Hermione fell on hearing of her son's death lasted so long, and had so completely the semblance of death, that it was so regarded by her husband, her attendants, and even by Paulina. The suspicion that animation was only suspended may have dawned upon Paulina, when, after the boy Mamillius had been laid by his mother's side, the inevitable change began to appear in him and not in Hermione. She would not give voice to her suspicion for fear of creating a false hope, but had the queen conveyed secretly to her own home, making arrangements, which her high position and then paramount power would enable her to make, that only the boy, and his mother's empty coffin, should be carried to the tomb. When after many days the trance gave way, Paulina would be near to perceive the first flickering of the eyelids, the first faint flush of blood returning to the cheek. Who can say how long the fearful shock to nerves and brain may have left Hermione in a state of torpor, hardly half alive, unconscious of everything that was pass

above her breeding, and many other evidences, proclaimed her with all certainty to be the king's daughter." The whole of this scene, which is of necessity omitted in the acted play, is of rare beauty. The meeting of the two kings is depicted with remarkable power. How exquisite is the stroke of pathos when, speaking of Leontes, "ready to leap out of himself for joy of his found daughter," he is described as crying out, as if that joy were now bea loss, "Oh, thy mother! thy mother!" Not less graphic is the picture of Paulina.

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"But oh, the noble combat that, 'twixt joy and sorrow, was fought in Paulina! She had one eye declined for the loss of her husband, another elevated that the oracle was fulfilled; she lifted the princess from the earth, and so locks her in embracing as if she would pin her to her heart, that she might no more be in danger of losing."

Paulina now has no longer any reason for withholding from Leontes the secret of his wife's existence. She ingeniously prepares a mode of revealing it by presenting Hermione to him in the semblance of a statue, on which she tells him a rare artist has been for years at work, and which he has slightly coloured to give it a more lifelike look. It was necessary to lay emphasis on this colouring, as the living Hermione, however skilfully arranged, must of necessity be very different from an ordinary statue. My dress in acting this scene was arranged to carry out this effect. It was composed of soft white cashmere, the draperies and edges bordered with the royal purple enriched with a tracery in gold, and thus harmonising with the colouring of the lips, eyes, hair, &c., of the statue.

pare to see

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The life as lively mock'd as ever Still sleep mock'd death. Behold, and say, 'tis well.”

At the back of the stage, when I acted in this play, was a dais which was led up to by a flight of six or eight steps, covered with rich cloth of the same material and crimson colour as the closed curtains. The curtains, when gradually opened by Paulina, disclosed, at a little distance behind them, the statue of Hermione, with a pedestal of marble by her side.

Here, let me say, that I never approached this scene without much inward trepidation. You may imagine how difficult it must be to stand in one position, with a full light thrown upon you, without moving an eyelid for so long a time. I never thought to have the time measured, but I should say that it must be more than ten minutes-it seemed like ten times ten. I prepared myself by picturing what Hermione's feelings would be when she heard Leontes' voice, silent to her for so many years, and listened to the remorseful tender words addressed to what

he believed to be her sculptured semblance. Her heart hitherto has been full only of her lost children. She has thought every other feeling dead, but she finds herself forgetting all but the tones of the voice, once so loved, now broken with the accents of repentance and woe-stricken desolation. To her own surprise her heart, so long empty, loveless, and cold, begins to throb again, as she listens to the outpourings of a devotion she had believed to be extinct. She would remember her own words to him, when the familiar loving tones were turned to anger and almost imprecation, "I never wished to see you sorry, now I trust I shall."

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Of the sorrow she had thus wished for him she is now witness, and it all but unnerves her. Paulina had, it seemed to me, besought Hermione to play the part of her own statue, in order that she might hear herself apostrophised, and be a silent witness of the remorse and unabated love of Leontes before her existence became known to him, and so be moved to that forgiveness, which, without such proof, she might possibly be slow to yield. She is so moved; but for the sake of the loving friend, to whom she has owed so much, she must restrain herself, and carry through her appointed task.

But, even although I had fully thought out all this, it was impossible for me ever to hear unmoved what passes in this wonderful scene. My first Leontes was Mr Macready, and, as the scene was played by him, the difficulty of wearing an air of statuesque calm became almost insuperable. As I think over the scene now, his appearance, his action, the tones of his voice, the emotions of that

VOL. CXLIX.-NO. DCCCCIII.