Fri. I will be brief, for my short date of breath Is not so long as is a tedious tale.

Romeo, there dead, was husband to that Juliet ;
And she, there dead, that Romeo's faithful wife:
I married them; and their stol'n marriage-day
Was Tybalt's dooms-day, whose untimely death
Banish'd the new-made bridegroom from this city;
For whom, and not for Tybalt, Juliet pin'd.
You, to remove that siege of grief from her,
Betroth'd, and would have married her perforce,
To County Paris:- then comes she to me,
And, with wild looks, bid me devise some means
To rid her from this second marriage,
Or in my cell there would she kill herself.
Then gave I her, so tutor'd by my art,
A sleeping potion; which so took effect
As I intended, for it wrought on her

The form of death: meantime I writ to Romeo,
That he should hither come, as this dire night,
To help to take her from her borrow'd grave,
Being the time the potion's force should cease.
But he which bore my letter, Friar John,
Was stay'd by accident; and yesternight
Return'd my letter back. Then all alone
At the prefixed hour of her waking,15
Came I to take her from her kindred's vault;
Meaning to keep her closely at my cell,
Till I conveniently could send to Romeo:
But, when I came, some minute ere the time
Of her awakening, here untimely lay
The noble Paris and true Romeo dead.
She wakes; and I entreated her come forth,
And bear this work of Heaven with patience:
But then a noise did scare me from the tomb;
And she, too desperate, would not go with me,
But, as it seems, did violence on herself.
All this I know; and to the marriage
Her nurse is privy; and, if aught in this
Miscarried by my fault, let my old life
Be sacrific'd, some hour before his time,
Unto the rigour of severest law.

Prince. We still have known thee for a holy man. Where's Romeo's man? what can he say in this? Bal. I brought my master news of Juliet's death; And then in post he came from Mantua

To this same place, to this same monument.

15 Hour is a dissyllable here.

This letter he early bid me give his father;
And threaten'd me with death, going in the vault,
If I departed not, and left him there.

Prince. Give me the letter, I will look on it.
Where is the County's page, that rais'd the watch?
Sirrah, what made your master in this place?16
Page. He came with flowers to strew his lady's grave;
And bid me stand aloof, and so I did:

Anon comes one with light to ope the tomb;

And by-and-by my master drew on him;

And then I ran away to call the watch.

Prince. This letter doth make good the Friar's words,
Their course of love, the tidings of her death:
And here he writes that he did buy a poison

Of a poor 'pothecary, and therewithal

Came to this vault to die, and lie with Juliet.

Where be these enemies? Capulet,- Montague,
See, what a scourge is laid upon your hate,

That Heaven finds means to kill your joys with love!
And I, for winking at your discords, too,

Have lost a brace of kinsmen: 17 - all are punish'd.
Cap. O brother Montague, give me thy hand:
This is my daughter's jointure, for no more

Can I demand.

Mon.

But I can give thee more:

For I will raise her statue in pure gold;

That, while Verona by that name is known,
There shall no figure at such rate be set

As that of true and faithful Juliet.

Cap. As rich shall Romeo by his lady lie;

Poor sacrifices of our enmity!

Prince. A gloomy peace this morning with it brings; The Sun, for sorrow, will not show his head.

Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;

Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished: 18
For never was a story of more woe,
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

[Exeunt.

16 What did your master, or what was he doing? See vol. i. page 24, note 4.

17 Mercutio and Paris. Mercutio is expressly called the Prince's kinsman in Act iii. sc. 4; and that Paris was also the Prince's kinsman, may be inferred from what Romeo says: "Let me peruse this face; Mercutio's kinsman, noble county Paris."

18 This line has reference to the poem from which the fable is taken; in which the Nurse is banished for concealing the marriage; Romeo's servant set at liberty, because he had only acted in obedience to his master's orders; the Apothecary is hanged; while Friar Lawrence was permitted to retire to a hermitage near Verona, where he ended his life in penitence and tranquillity.

INTRODUCTION TO CYMBELINE.

THE HE Tragedy of Cymbeline, as it is called in the original copy, is among the plays that were first printed in the folio of 1623, which is consequently our sole authority for the text. Though not so badly printed as some of the plays in that volume, still, either from the badness of the printing or from the peculiarities of Shakespeare's style being carried to a higher pitch than usual, the text is often in a questionable state, and in some places very difficult to manage.

The only contemporary notice we have of the play is from the diary of Dr. Simon Forman, who gives with considerable detail the incidents of the plot, as he saw it performed at the Globe theatre somewhere between April, 1610, and May, 1611. There is no reason to doubt that the piece was fresh from the mint when Forman saw it. It has the same general characteristics of style and imagery as The Tempest and The Winter's Tale; while perhaps no play in the series abounds more in those overcrammed and elliptical passages which show too great a rush and press of thought for the author's space. The poetry and characterization, also, are marked by the same severe beauty and austere sweetness as in the other plays just named therewithal the moral sentiment of the piece comes out, from time to time, in just those electric starts which indicate, to my mind, the Poet's last and highest stage of art.

The only part of the drama that has any historical basis is that about the demanding and enforcing of the Roman tribute. This Shakespeare derived, as usual in matters of British history, from Holinshed, who places the scene in the reign of the Emperor Augustus, and a few years before the beginning of the Christian era. The domestic part of the King's action, with all that relates to the Queen and Cloten, except the name of the latter, is, so far as we know, a pure invention of the Poet's; as is also the entire part of Belarius and the King's two sons, except that the names Guiderius and Arviragus were found in Holinshed. The main plot of the drama, except the strong part which Pisanio has in it, is of fabulous origin, the story however being used with the Poet's customary freedom of enrichment and adaptation. What source Shakespeare drew from directly in this part of the work, is not altogether clear. The chief points in the story seem to have been a sort of common property among the writers of Mediæval Romance. The leading incidents - -as the wager, the villain's defeat, his counterfeit of success, the husband's scheme of revenge by the death of the wife, her escape, his subsequent discovery of the fraud, the punishment of the liar, and the final reunion of the separated pair- are found in two French romances of the thirteenth century, and in a French miracle-play of still earlier date. There are two or three rather curious indications that the miracle-play was known to Shakespeare, though this could hardly be, unless he read French. A rude version, also, of the story was published in a book called Westward for Smelts, and was entitled The Tale told by the Fishwife of the Stand on the Green;" placing the scene in England in the reign of Henry the Sixth, and making the persons all English. This, however, cannot be traced further back than the year 1620, and there is no likelihood that the Poet had any knowledge of it. But the completest form of the story is in one of Boccaccio's Novels, the Ninth of the Second Day, where we have the trunk used for conveying the villain into the lady's bedchamber, his discovery of a private mark on her person, and her disguise in male

attire. As these incidents are not found in any other version of the tale, they seem to establish a connection between the novel and the play. Boccaccio is not known to have been accessible to the Poet in English; but then, as I have before remarked, we have divers indications of his having been able to read Italian books in the original.

An outline of the story would fill too much space for the limits of this Introduction. I must note, however, that in respect of character Imogen, who is the supreme glory of the play, really has nothing in common with the heroine of the tale. And indeed the Poet took rone of his character from the novel, for this can hardly be said to have any thing of the kind to give; its persons being used only for the sake of the story, which order is just reversed in the play. But the novel presented certain obvious points of popular interest: these the Poet borrowed as a framework of circumstances to support his own original conceptions, evidently caring little for the incidents, as we care little for them, but in reference to this end.

In its structure, Cymbeline is more complex and involved than any other of Shakespeare's dramas. It includes no less than four distinct groups of persons, with each its several interest and course of action. First, we have Imogen, Posthumus, Pisanio, and Iachimo, in which group the main interest is centred; then, the King, the Queen, and Prince Cloten, the Queen's shrewd blockhead of a son, who carry on a separate scheme of their own; next the Imperial representative, Lucius, who comes first as Roman ambassador to reclaim the negglected tribute, and then as general with an army to enforce it; last, old Belarius and the two lost Princes, who emerge from their hidingplace to bear a leading part in bringing about the catastrophe. All these groups, however, though without any concert or common purpose of their own, draw together with perfect smoothness and harmony in working out the author's plan; the several threads of interest and lines of action being woven into one texture, richly varied indeed, but seeming as natural as life itself; the more so perhaps, that the actors themselves know not how or why they are thus brought together.

Several of the Poet's dramas surpass this in grandeur and vastness of design, but probably none in grace and power of execution. "We have only," says Gervinus, "to examine its several parts according to their internal nature, and refer to the motives, and we shall catch the idea which links them together, and perceive a work of art whose compass widens and whose background deepens in such a manner, that we can only compare it with the most excellent of all that Shakespeare has produced." I cannot well conceive how a finer and more varied display of poetry and character could be reduced within the same compass. Except the vision and what pertains to it, in the fifth Act, the most improbable of the incidents were, as before shown, borrowed from general circulation; the story having been cast into divers forms, and already fixed in the popular belief. The incidents being granted, Shakespeare's ordering of them to his use, the whole framing and managing of the plot so as to work out the result proposed, are exceedingly skilful and judicious. Take, for instance, the circumstances of the King's two sons having their home with the noble old exile in the mountain-cave, and of the heroine straying thither in disguise, faint and weary, and entering the rock in quest of food and rest, and what follows in her intercourse with the princely boys; - what could be more delightful, what more inspiring of truth and purity than all this? Will any one say that the sweet home-breathings of Nature which consecrate these delectable scenes do not a thousand times make up for the strangeness of the incidents? The leading purpose of the play is indeed to be sought for in the