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The offences we have made you do we'll answer."

At this point Leontes breaks in with "Is he won yet?"

"Her. He'll stay, my lord.

Leon. At my request he would not. Hermione, my dearest, thou ne'er spok'st

To better purpose."

Strange words from one who so directly afterwards finds cause for jealousy in the success of his wife's pleading! Still stranger is it, and more suggestive of the disturbance already at work in the brain of Leontes, that he could possibly doubt Hermione's faith, after what she says in the dialogue that follows, in which she so sweetly challenges his remark that she had never spoken to

better purpose. In acting, how much should be indicated in the

tone of Hermione's "Never"? Have you forgotten, it asks, your long wooing, and the consent it at last won from me? Will not

the words I then spoke rank for ever the highest in your regard? but liking to be entreated, only Leontes, quite taking her meaning, says, "Never but once." Then comes her charming rejoinder,so pretty, so coaxing, something like Desdemona's to Othello, when pleading for a gentle answer to Cassio's suit (Act iii. sc. 3).

"Her. What have I twice said well? When was't before? I prithee tell me :

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Why, lo you now, I have spoke to the

purpose twice.

The one for ever earn'd a royal husband,"

giving, as she speaks, her left hand with the marriage symbol upon it to Leontes. Then with the words

"The other for some while a friend," she offers her right hand in token

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of friendship to Polixenes, who retains it while talking apart with her for a while, amusing her, we may imagine, with pleasant stories of the youthful frolics and fancies of Leontes and himself, when they were as twinn'd lambs, that did frisk i' the sun," and making her smile in pure joyousness of heart to hear what Leontes was in the days before she knew him, little dreaming the while, as she leaves her hand in that of Polixenes, as he leads her along, that in the eyes of Leontes this natural evidence of friendship is being construed into "paddling palms and pinching fingers," and "making practised smiles as in a looking-glass."

What must have been the condition of his mind, when room could be found in it for unholy distrust of the woman who the moment before had dwelt with such loving tenderness upon the time when he wooed and won her, and this, too, in the presence of the very man whom his disordered fancy believes to have supplanted him in her affections! A sudden access of madness can alone account for the debasing change in the nature of Leontes, who until now has shown himself not unworthy of his queen. Such inexplicable outbreaks of jealousy, I have been told, do occasionally occur in real life. While they last, the very nature of their victims is transformed, and their imagination, wholesome and cleanly till then, becomes, like that of Leontes, "foul as Vulcan's stithy." It was easy for Greene, with the greater latitude which the narrative form allows, to lead up to and explain the ultimate explosion of Pandosto's jealousy, which had been silently growing through the protracted stay of Egistus at his Court, until at last he began to put a vile construc

tion upon his wife's simplest acts of courtesy and hospitality. But drama allows no scope for slow development. Shakespeare has therefore dealt with Leontes as a man in whom the passion of jealousy is inherent; and shows it breaking out suddenly with a force that is deaf to reason, and which, stimulated by an imagination tainted to the core, finds evidences of guilt in actions the most innocent. How different is such a nature from Othello's! He was "not easily

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jealous"; but, having become "perplexed in the extreme by Iago's perversion of circumstances innocent in themselves,"trifles light as air," he loses for a while his faith in the being he loved as his very life. Even then, grief for the fall of her whom he had made his idol,—“ Oh the pity of it, the pity of it, Iago!"

surges up through the wildest paroxysms of his passion. Tenderness for a beauty so exquisite that "the sense ached at it," stays his uplifted dagger. In his mind Desdemona is, to the last, the "cunning'st pattern of excelling nature." As the victim of craftily devised stratagem, he never himself quite forfeits our sympathy.

Of the jealousy that animates Leontes, the jealousy that needs no extraneous prompting to suspicion, Emilia, in "Othello," gives a perfect description. In answer to the hope which she expresses to Desdemona that Othello's harsh bearing towards her is due to state affairs, and to "no conception, nor no jealous toy concerning you," Desdemona replies, "Alas the day, I never gave him cause!" To this Emilia rejoins—

"But jealous souls will not be answered so;

They are not ever jealous for the

cause,

But jealous, for they are jealous; 'tis with seemingly all the old friend

a monster

Begot upon itself, born on itself."

This is the jealousy which Shakespeare has portrayed in Leontes, -a jealousy without excuse,cruel, vindictive, and remorseless almost beyond belief.

Othello, moreover, had been wedded, so far as we see, but a few brief weeks. He had not had time to prove how deeply Desdemona loved him. But years of happy wedlock had assured Leontes of Hermione's affection,-years in which he had tested the inward nobility which expressed itself in that majestic bearing, of which he speaks again and again, long after he has reason to be

lieve her to be dead. Maintaining through all her life the charm of royal graciousness and dignity, she has inspired the chivalrously enthusiastic admiration and devotion of every member of the Court; a woman, in short, with whom no derogatory thought could be associated, being, as she is described by one of them to be, "so sovereignly honourable."

That Leontes' brain is by this time unsettled is manifest in the broken dialogue which he holds with his darling Mamillius. His altered looks and manner attract the attention of both Hermione and Polixenes. Hermione

liness, he asks

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"I am angling now, Though you perceive me not, how I give line,'

But with the madman's shallow "You look," says cunning he enjoins Hermione, as he goes, to show how she loves himself "in our brother's welcome," adding

"As if you held a brow of much distraction :

Are you moved, my lord?"

With something of the secretiveness and cunning of a man on the brink of madness, he evades the inquiry by saying that his boy's face had made him think of the days when, twenty-three years back, he was a child of the same age. Then, turning to Polixenes

"Next to thyself and my young
rover, he's
Apparent to my heart,”

Poor Hermione ! How little does she dream of the canker that is even now eating away all that is noble in the character of her Leontes! Her happiness would appear to be without alloy. Blest, as she

thinks herself, in her husband's love and trust; blest in a child more than usually bright, loving, and attractive; happy in the friendship of a man whose high qualities she cannot fail to admire and esteem, and whom she is, enjoined by her husband to trust as a brother, her life is already flooded with sunshine; and in her

mother's heart there is still another budding hope that in the near future will complete the measure of her joy.

How swiftly all is changed! Utterly losing self-control, Leontes summons his chamber-councillor Camillo, and pours out a flood of invectives upon the queen, so gross as to provoke the rebuke—

"I would not be a stander-by, to hear My sovereign mistress clouded so, without

My present vengeance taken, 'Shrew my heart,

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You never spoke what did become you less Than this."

Remonstrance, however, is use

less.

Camillo quickly sees that his only course is to humour the passion which has suddenly transformed the master he had loved into a furious madman. Not, however, for one instant does he

waver in his belief in the purity

of his "dread mistress."

Thus, while making a show of consenting to the demand of Leontes that he shall poison Polixenes—a demand peculiarly shameful, as Leontes has appointed him the cup-bearer of his guest (whom therefore he was especially bound to protect)-he does so only

"Provided, that when he's removed, your highness

Will take again your queen, as yours at first,

Even for your son's sake, and thereby, for sealing

The injury of tongues, in courts and kingdoms

Known and allied to yours." Leontes professes that this is his intention, adding, to deceive Camillo, "I'll give no blemish to her

honour-none." At such a crisis to gain time was everything, and with this view Camillo urges the king to show no change in his demeanour towards Polixenes and Hermione. Promising to follow his advice, Leontes goes away. Camillo, however, foresees nothing but sorrow for his beloved mistress in the future. "" Oh, miserable lady!" is his first_exclamation when left alone. But he has to consider his own position, and having pledged himself to the king to an act from which his soul recoils, no course is left him but to leave the country. In his present mood, Leontes, he feels, is no longer a responsible being. How baseless were

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his

assur

ances that he would continue to seem friendly" to the object of his jealousy is promptly shown upon the entry of Polixenes, who complains that Leontes has passed him without speaking, and with

"such a countenance

"As he had lost some province and a region

Loved as he loves himself. Even now

I met him

With customary compliment; when he, Wafting his eyes to the contrary, and falling

A lip of much contempt, speeds from

So

me; and

leaves me to consider what is breeding,

That changes thus his manners."

Urged by Polixenes to throw light, if he can, upon what has caused this sudden change, Camillo at first does no more than urge him for his own safety to leave the Court at once, as he means himself to do. On being pressed to say why, he

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and in his every word shows how impossible it was that he could ever have entertained any feeling towards Hermione but that of reverential admiration. His instinct as a man of honour would have led him to remain and confront Leontes. But from what Camillo tells him, he sees that this course would endanger his own life, and possibly bring further indignity upon the queen. At the same time he sadly divines into what excesses of vindictive passion Leontes was likely to be driven. "This jealousy," he says,

"Is for a precious creature: as she's rare,

Must it be great; and, as his person's mighty,

Must it be violent; and as he does conceive

He is dishonour'd by a man which

ever

Profess'd to him, why, his revenges must

In that be made more bitter."

Therefore, with the aid of Camillo, who escapes with him, he secretly and swiftly returns to his own kingdom of Bohemia, and sixteen years elapse before we hear of either of them again.

Meanwhile Shakespeare shows us Hermione again under an aspect that brings her home still more closely to our sympathies, while it deepens the pathos of the terrible burden that is presently to be laid upon her.

Is there, even in Shakespeare, any passage more charming in itself, or more cunningly devised to reveal to an audience the main purpose of the play, than the brief scene with which the second act opens? The boy Mamillius, of whom Archidamus had spoken as the "gallant child," the "gentleman of the greatest promise that ever came into his note," unconscious of the delicate condition of his caresses and the eager imporhis mother, has fatigued her with tunity of his questions. "Take the boy to you," she says to her ladies-in-waiting,

"He so troubles me,

'Tis past enduring. 1st Lady. Come, my gracious lord, Shall be your playfellow? Mam. No, I'll none of you. 1st Lady. Why, my sweet lord? Mam. You'll kiss me hard; and

speak to me as if

I were a baby still. I love you better. 2d Lady. And why so, my lord ? Mam. Not for because Your brows are blacker; yet black brows, they say,

Become some women best ; so that there be not

Too much hair there, but in a semicircle,

Or a half-moon made with a pen.

2d Lady. Who taught you this? Mam. I learn'd it out of women's faces."

What mother could long keep such a darling from her? Hermione could not, and presently she calls him back to her from the circle of her ladies, who have gathered round him, delighted with his precocious prattle.

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