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lovers, because marriage ought to be at the end of the romance, and not at the beginning. They dote upon Mascarille (the disguised lacquey) when he assures them “Les gens de qualité savent tout sans avoir jamais rien appris." They are in ecstasies at everything. Madelon is "furieusement pour les portraits ;" O Cathos loves "terriblement les énigmes." Even Mascarille's ribbon is "furieusement bien choisi ;"- his gloves "sentent terriblement bons ;" - and his feathers are “effroyablement belles." But, in the 'Précieuses Ridicules,' Molière, as we have said, dealt with one affectation ;—in 'Love's Labour's Lost' Shakspere presents us almost every variety of affectation that is founded upon a misdirection of intellectual activity. We have here many of the forms in which cleverness is exhibited as opposed to wisdom, and false refinement as opposed to simplicity. The affected characters, even the most fantastical, are not fools; but, at the same time, the natural characters, who, in this play, are chiefly the women, have their intellectual foibles. All the modes of affectation are developed in one continued stream of fun and drollery ;-every one is laughing at the folly of the other, and the laugh grows louder and louder as the more natural characters, one by one, trip up the heels of the more affected. The most affected at last join in the laugh with the most natural; and the whole comes down to "plain kersey yea and nay,"-from the syntax of Holofernes, and the "fire-new words" of Armado, to " greasy Joan" and "roasted crabs."Let us hastily review the comedy under this aspect.

The courtiers, in their pursuit of "that | Aminte. They dismiss their plain honest angel knowledge," waste their time in subtle contentions how that angel is to be won; -the ladies from France spread their pavilions in the sunny park, and there keep up | their round of jokes with their "wit's peddler," Boyet, "the nice ;"-Armado listens to his page while he warbles Concolinel;' -Jaquenetta, though she is "allowed for the dey," seems to have no dairy to look after;-Costard acts as if he were neither ploughman nor swineherd, and born for no other work than to laugh for ever at Moth, and, in the excess of his love for that "pathetical nit," to exclaim, “An I had but one penny in the world, thou shouldst have it to buy gingerbread;"- the schoolmaster appears to be without scholars, the curate without a cure, the constable without watch and ward. There is, indeed, one parenthesis of real business connected with the progress of the action-the difference between France and Navarre, in the matter of Aquitain. But the settlement of this business is deferred till "to-morrow"- the "packet of specialties" is not come; and whether Aquitain goes back to France, or the hundred thousand crowns return to Navarre, we never learn. This matter, then, being postponed till a more fitting season, the whole set abandon themselves to what Dr. Johnson calls "strenuous idleness." The King and his courtiers forswear their studies, and every man becomes a lover and a sonneteer; the refined traveller of Spain resigns himself to his passion for the dairy-maid; the schoolmaster and the curate talk learnedly after dinner; and, at last, the King, the nobles, the priest, the pedant, the braggart, the page, and the clown join in one dance of mummery, in which they all laugh, and are laughed at. But still all this idleness is too energetic to warrant us in calling this the Comedy of Leisure. Let us try again. Is it not the Comedy of Affectations?

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The affectation of the King and his courtiers begins at the very beginning of the play. The mistake upon which they set out, in their desire to make their court "a little academe," is not an uncommon one. It is the attempt to separate the contemplative from the active life; to forego duties for abstractions; to sacrifice innocent pleasures for plans of mortification, difficult to be executed, and useless if carried through. Many a young student has been haunted by the same dream; and he only required to

be living in an age when vows bound mankind to objects of pursuit that now present but the ludicrous side, to have had his dreams converted into very silly realities. The resistance of Biron to the vow of his fellows is singularly able,-his reasoning is deep and true, and ought to have turned them aside from their folly :

"Study is like the heaven's glorious sun,

That will not be deep-search'd with saucy looks;

Small have continual plodders ever won,

Save base authority from others' books."

But the vow is ratified, and its abjuration will only be the result of its practical inconvenience. The "French king's daughter." the "admired princess," is coming to confer with the King and his court, who have resolved to talk with no woman for three

years:

the

"So study evermore is overshot." But the "child of fancy" appears"fantastic"-the "magnificent"-the "man of great spirit who grows melancholy"-he who is "ill at a reckoning, because it fitteth the spirit of a tapster"-he who confesses to be a "gentleman and a gamester," because "both are the varnish of a complete man." How capitally does Moth, his page, hit him off, when he intimates that only "the base vulgar" call deuce-ace three! And yet this indolent piece of refinement is

"A man in all the world's new fashions planted,

That hath a mint of phrases in his brain;" and he himself has no mean idea of his abilities-he is "for whole volumes in folio." Moth, who continually draws him out to laugh at him, is an embryo wag, whose common sense is constantly opposed to his master's affectations; and Costard is another cunning bit of nature, though cast in a coarser mould, whose heart runs over with joy at the tricks of his little friend, this "nit of mischief."

The Princess and her train arrive at Navarre. We have already learnt to like the King and his lords, and have seen their fine natures shining through the affectations by

which they are clouded. We scarcely require, therefore, to hear their eulogies delivered from the mouths of the Princess's ladies, who have appreciated their real worth. Biron, however, has all along been our favourite; and we feel that, in some degree, he deserves the character which Rosaline gives him :

"A merrier man,
Within the limit of becoming mirth,
I never spent an hour's talk withal:
His eye begets occasion for his wit;
For every object that the one doth catch
The other turns to a mirth-moving jest ;
Which his fair tongue (conceit's expositor)
Delivers in such apt and gracious words,
That aged ears play truant at his tales,
And younger hearings are quite ravished;
So sweet and voluble is his discourse."

But, with all this disposition to think highly of the nobles of the self-denying court, the "mad wenches" of France are determined to use their "civil wits" on "Navarre and his bookmen," for their absurd vows; and well do they keep their determination. Boyet is a capital courtier, always ready for a gibe at the ladies, and always ready to bear their gibes. Costard thinks he is "a most simple clown;" but Biron more accurately describes him at length :

"Why, this is he That kiss'd away his hand in courtesy: This is the ape of form, monsieur the nice, That, when he plays at tables, chides the dice In honourable terms; nay, he can sing A mean most meanly; and, in ushering, Mend him who can: the ladies call him, sweet: The stairs, as he treads on them, kiss his feet." We are very much tempted to think that, in his character of Boyet, Shakspere had in view that most amusing coxcomb Master Robert Laneham, whose letter from Kenilworth, in which he gives the following account of himself, was printed in 1575 :-" Always among the gentlewomen with my good will, and when I see company according, then I can be as lively too. Sometimes I foot it with dancing; now with my gittern and else with my cittern; then at the virginals; ye know nothing comes amiss to me; then carol I up

a song withal, that by and by they come flocking about me like bees to honey, and ever they cry, 'Another, good Laneham, another.'

Before the end of Navarre's first interview with the Princess, Boyet has discovered that he is "infected." At the end of the next act, we learn from Biron himself that he is in the same condition. Away then goes the Vow with the King and Biron. In the fourth act we find that the infection has spread to all the lords; but the love of the King and his courtiers is thoroughly characteristic. It may be sincere enough, but it is still love fantastical. It hath taught Biron "to rhyme and to be melancholy." The King drops his paper of poesy; Longaville reads his sonnet, which makes flesh "a deity;" and Dumain, in his most beautiful anacreontic, -as sweet a piece of music as Shakspere ever penned-shows "how love can vary wit." The scene in which each lover is detected by the other, and all laughed at by Biron, till he is detected himself, is thoroughly dramatic; and there is perhaps nothing finer in the whole range of the Shaksperean comedy than the passage where Biron casts aside his disguises, and rises to the height of poetry and eloquence. The burst when the "rent lines" discover "some love" of Biron is incomparably fine :—

"Who sees the heavenly Rosaline, That like a rude and savage man of Inde,

At the first opening of the gorgeous east, Bows not his vassal head; and, strucken blind, Kisses the base ground with obedient

breast?"

The famous speech of Biron, which follows, is perhaps unmatched as a display of poetical rhetoric, except by the speeches of Ulysses to Achilles in the third act of 'Troilus and Cressida.' Coleridge has admirably described this speech of Biron. "It is logic clothed in rhetoric ;-but observe how Shakspere, in his twofold being of poet and philosopher, avails himself of it to convey profound truths in the most lively images-the whole remaining faithful to the character supposed to utter the lines, and the expressions themselves constituting a further de

velopment of that character."* The rhetoric of Biron produces its effect. "Now to plain dealing," says Longaville; but Biron, the merry man, whose love is still half fun, is for more circuitous modes than laying their hearts at the feet of their mistresses. He is of opinion that

"Revels, dances, masks, and merry hours, Forerun fair Love;"

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and he therefore recommends some strange pastime" to solace the dames. But "the gallants will be task'd."

King and Princess, lords and ladies, must make way for the great pedants. The form of affectation is now entirely changed. It is not the cleverness of rising superior to all other men by despising the "affects " to which every man is born-it is not the cleverness of labouring at the most magnificent phrases to express the most common ideas; but it is the cleverness of two persons using conventional terms, which they have picked up from a common source, and which they believe sealed to the mass of mankind, instead of employing the ordinary colloquial phrases by which ideas are rendered intelligible. This is pedantry-and Shakspere shows his excellent judgment in bringing a brace of pedants upon the scene. In O'Keefe's 'Agreeable Surprise,' and in Colman's Heir at Law,' we have a single pedant-the one talking Latin to a milk-maid, and the other to a tallow-chandler. This is farce. But the pedantry of Holofernes and the curate is comedy. They each address the other in their freemasonry of learning. They each flatter the other. But for the rest of the world, they look down upon them. "Sir," saith the curate, excusing the "twice-sod simplicity" of Goodman Dull, "he hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink: his intellect is not replenished." But Goodman Dull has his intellect stimulated by this abuse. He has heard the riddles of the "ink-horn" men, and he sports a riddle of his own :

*Literary Remains,' vol. ii. p. 105.

You two are book-men: Can you tell by your wit,

The ladies have received verses and jewels from their lovers; but they trust not to the

What was a month old at Cain's birth, that's verses-they think them "bootless rhymes," not five weeks old as yet?" -the effusions of " prodigal wits:"

The

"Folly in fools bears not so strong a note As foolery in the wise."

When Boyet discloses to the Princess the scheme of the mask of Muscovites, she is more confirmed in her determination to laugh at the laughers :

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They do it but in mocking merriment ; And mock for mock is only my intent." The affectation of "speeches penn'd" is overthrown in a moment by the shrewdness of the women, who encounter the fustian harangue with prosaic action. Moth comes in crammed with others' affectations :—

"All hail, the richest beauties on the earth! A holy parcel of the fairest dames"-

The answer of Holofernes is the very quin-
tessence of pedantry. He gives Goodman
Dull the hardest name for the moon in the
mythology. Goodman Dull is with difficulty
quieted. Holofernes then exhibits his poetry;
and he "will something affect the letter, for
it argues facility." He produces, as all pe-
dants attempt to produce, not what is good
when executed, but what is difficult of exe-
cution. Satisfied with his own performances
-"the gift is good in those in whom it is
acute, and I am thankful for it"-he is pro-
fuse in his contempt for other men's produc-
tions. He undertakes to prove Biron's can-
zonet "to be very unlearned, neither savour-
ing of poetry, wit, nor invention."
portrait is two hundred years old, and yet The ladies turn their backs on him—
how many of the present day might sit for
it! Holofernes, however, is not meant by
Shakspere for a blockhead. He is made of
better stuff than the ordinary run of those
who "educate youth at the charge-house."
Shakspere has taken care that we should see
flashes of good sense amidst his folly. To say
nothing of the curate's commendations of his
reasons at dinner," we have his own de-
scription of Armado, to show how clearly he
could discover the ludicrous side of others.
The pedant can see the ridiculous in pedantry
of another stamp. But the poet also takes
care that the ridiculous side of "the two
learned men shall still be prominent. Moth
and Costard are again brought upon the
scene to laugh at those who "have been at a
great feast of languages, and have stolen the
scraps." Costard himself is growing affected.
He has picked up the fashion of being clever,
and he has himself stolen honorificabilitudi-
nitatibus out of "the alms-basket of words."
But business proceeds :-Holofernes will pre-
sent before the Princess the nine worthies,
and he will play three himself. The soul of
the schoolmaster is in this magnificent de-
vice; and he looks down with most self-
satisfied pity on honest Dull, who has spoken
no word, and understood none.

"That ever turn'd their-backs-to mortal
views!"

Biron in vain gives him the cue-"their eyes, villain, their eyes :"-" the pigeon-egg of discretion" has ceased to be discreet-he is out, and the speech is ended. The maskers will try for themselves. They each take a masked lady apart, and each finds a wrong mistress, who has no sympathy with him. The keen breath of "mocking wenches " has puffed out all their fine conceits :

"Well, better wits have worn plain statutecaps."

The sharp medicine has had its effect. The King and his lords return without their disguises; and, being doomed to hear the echo of the laugh at their folly, they come down from their stilts to the level ground of common sense-from "taffeta phrases" and "figures pedantical" to

"Russet yeas, and honest kersey noes."

But the Worthies are coming; we have not yet done with the affectations and the mocking merriment. Biron maliciously desires "to have one show worse than the King's and his company." Those who have

been laughed at now take to laughing at others. Costard, who is the most natural of the Worthies, comes off with the fewest hurts. He has performed Pompey marvellously well, and he is not a little vain of his performance -"I hope I was perfect." When the learned curate breaks down as Alexander, the apology of Costard for his overthrow is inimitable : "There, an 't shall please you; a foolish mild man; an honest man, look you, and soon dashed! He is a marvellous good neighbour, in sooth; and a very good bowler; but, for Alisander, alas! you see how 't is ; a little o'erparted." Holofernes comes off worse than the curate" Alas, poor Machabæus, how hath he been baited!" We feel, in spite of our inclination to laugh at the pedant, that his remonstrance is just "This is not generous, not gentle, not humble." We know that to be generous, to be gentle, to be humble, are the especial virtues of the great; and Shakspere makes us see that the schoolmaster is right. Lastly, comes Armado. His discomfiture is still more signal. The malicious trick that Biron suggests to Costard shows that Rosaline's original praise of him was not altogether deserved that his merriment was not always

"Within the limit of becoming mirth." The affectations of Biron are cast aside, but

he has a natural fault to correct, worse than any affectation; and beautifully does Rosaline hold up to him the glass which shows him how

"To choke a gibing spirit,

Whose influence is begot of that loose grace
Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools."

The affectations are blown into thin air. The King and his courtiers have to turn from speculation to action-from fruitless vows to deeds of charity and piety. Armado is about to apply to what is useful: "I have vowed to Jaquenetta to hold the plough for her sweet love three years." The voices of the pedants are heard no more in scraps of Latin. They are no longer "singled from the barbarous." But, on the contrary, "the dialogue that the two learned men have compiled, in praise of the owl and the cuckoo," is full of the most familiar images, expressed in the most homely language. Shakspere, unquestionably, to our minds, brought in this most characteristic song-(a song that he might have written and sung in the chimney-corner of his father's own kitchen, long before he dreamt of having a play acted before Queen Elizabeth)-to mark, by an emphatic close, the triumph of simplicity over false refinement.

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CHAPTER IV.

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.

IN Dr. Farmer's 'Essay on the Learning of Shakspeare,' we find this passage:-"The story of All's Well that Ends Well' or, as I suppose it to have been sometimes called, 'Love's Labour Wonne"" (and here Farmer inserts a reference to Meres' 'Wits' Treasury,' where 'Love's Labour Wonne' is mentioned amongst plays by Shakspere,) "is originally indeed the property of Boccace, but it came immediately to Shakspeare from Painter's Giletta of Narbon."" Mr. Hun

ter, in his 'Disquisition on the Tempest,' repudiates the notion that 'Love's Labour Won' and 'All's Well that Ends Well' are identical. Mr. Hunter states that a passing remark of Dr. Farmer, in the Essay on the Learning of Shakspeare,' first pointed out this supposed identity; and he adds, "the remark has since been caught up and repeated by a thousand voices. Yet it was made in the most casual, random, and hasty manner imaginable. It was supported by

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