suredly, the reader who opens that scene for the first time will feel that he has lighted upon a work of no ordinary power. The mere interruption of the bridal procession by the widowed queens the contrast of their black garments and their stained veils with the white robes and wheaten chaplets and hymeneal songs with which the play opens is a noble dramatic conception; but the poet, whoever he be, possesses that command of appropriate language which realizes all that the imagination can paint of a dramatic situation and movement; there is nothing shadowy or indistinct, no vague explanations, no trivial epithets. When the First Queen

says

"Oh, pity, duke !

Thou purger of the earth, draw thy fear'd sword

That does good turns to the world; give us the bones

Of our dead kings, that we may chapel them!" we know that the thoughts which belong to her condition are embodied in words of no common significancy. When the Second Queen, addressing Hippolyta," the soldieress," says,—

"

'Speak 't in a woman's key, like such a woman As any of us three; weep ere you fail; Lend us a knee;

But touch the ground for us no longer time Than a dove's motion, when the head's pluck'd off!"

we feel that the poet not only wields his harmonious language with the decision of a practised artist, but exhibits the nicer touches which attest his knowledge of natural feelings, and employs images which, however strange and unfamiliar, are so true that we wonder they never occurred to us before,

appear to defy copying or imitation. The whole scene is full of the same remarkable word-painting. There is another quality which it exhibits, which is also peculiar to the highest order of minds—the ability to set us thinking-to excite that just and appropriate reflection which might arise of itself out of the exhibition of deep passions and painful struggles and resolute selfdenials, but which the true poet breathes into us without an effort, so as to give the key to our thoughts, but utterly avoiding those sententious moralizings which are sometimes deemed to be the province of tragedy. When the Queens commend the surrender which Theseus makes of his affections to a sense of duty, the poet gives us the philosophy of such heroism in a dozen words spoken by Theseus :—

"As we are men,

Thus should we do; being sensually subdued, We lose our humane title."

The first appearance, in Chaucer, of Palamon and Arcite is when they lie wounded on the battle-field of Thebes. In 'The Two Noble Kinsmen' the necessary conduct of the story, as a drama, requires that the principal personages should be exhibited to us before they become absorbed in the main action. It is on such occasions as these that a dramatist of the highest order makes his characters reveal themselves, naturally and without an effort; and yet so distinctly that their individual identity is impressed upon the mind, so as to combine with the subsequent movement of the plot. The second scene of The Two Noble Kinsmen' appears to us somewhat deficient in this power. It is written with great energy; but the two friends are energetic alike: we do not precisely see which is the more excitable, the more daring, the more resolved, the more generous. We could change the names of the speakers without any material injury to the propriety of what they speak. Take, as an opposite example, Hermia and Helena, in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream,' where the differences of character scarcely required to he so nicely defined. And yet in description

Will dwell upon his object; melancholy
Becomes him nobly; so does Arcite's mirth;
But Palamon's sadness is a kind of mirth,
So mingled, as if mirth did make him sad,
And sadness, merry; those darker humours,
that

Stick misbecomingly on others, on him
Live in fair dwelling."

This is noble writing; and it is quite suffi-
cient to enable the stage representation of
the two characters to be well defined. Omit
it, and omit the recollections of it in the
reading, and we doubt greatly whether the
characters themselves realize this descrip-
tion they are not self-evolved and mani-
fested. The third scene, also, is a dramatic
addition to the tale of Chaucer. It keeps
the interest concentrated upon Hippolyta,
and, especially, Emilia; it is not essential to
the action, but it is a graceful addition to it.
It has the merit, too, of developing the cha-
racter of Emilia, and so to reconcile us to
the apparent coldness with which she is
subsequently content to receive the triumph-
ant rival, whichever he be, as her husband.
The Queen and her sister talk of the friend-
ship of Theseus and Perithous. Emilia tells
the story of her own friendship, to prove
"That the true love 'tween maid and maid
may be

More than in sex dividual."

This, in some sort, modifies the subsequent position of Emilia, “bride-habited, but maiden-hearted." Her description of her early friendship has been compared to the celebrated passage in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream :'

"Is all the counsel that we two have shared,"&c.

You talk of Perithous' and Theseus' love; Theirs has more ground, is more maturely season'd,

More buckled with strong judgment, and their needs

The one of th' other may be said to water
Their intertangled roots of love; but I
And she (I sigh and spoke of) were things
innocent,

Loved for we did, and like the elements
That know not what, nor why, yet do effect
Rare issues by their operance; our souls
Did so to one another: what she liked
Was then of me approved; what not, con-
demn'd,

No more arraignment; the flower that I would pluck

And put between my breasts (oh, then but beginning

To swell about the blossom), she would long
Till she had such another, and commit it
To the like innocent cradle, where phoenix-
like

They died in perfume: on my head no toy
But was her pattern; her affections (pretty,
Though happily her careless wear) I follow'd
For my most serious decking; had mine ear
Stol❜n some new air, or at adventure humm'd

one

From musical coinage, why, it was a note

William Spalding, Esq.; and, although we have reason to believe that his opinions on this particular question have undergone some change or modification, it would be unjust, not only to the author, but to our readers, not to notice with more than common respect the opinions of a writer who, although then a very young man, displayed a power of analysis and discrimination which marked him as belonging to a high school of criticism. Mr. Spalding assumes that a considerable portion of this drama was unquestionably the production of Shakspere; that the under-plot was entirely by a different hand; but that the same hand, which was that of Fletcher, was also engaged in producing some of the higher scenes of the main action. The whole of the first act, according to the traditional opinion, he holds to have been written by Shakspere. The dialogue before us in the first scene of the second act, and the subsequent contest for the love of Emilia, he assigns to Fletcher. Our readers will not regret the length of

The fair-eyed maids shall weep our banishments,

And in their songs curse ever blinded Fortune,

Till she for shame see what a wrong she has done

To youth and nature: this is all our world; We shall know nothing here, but one another; Hear nothing, but the clock that tells our woes;

The vine shall grow, but we shall never see it; Summer shall come, and with her all delights, But dead cold winter must inhabit here still! Pal. 'Tis too true, Arcite! To our Theban

hounds,

That shook the aged forest with their echoes, No more now must we halloo; no more shake Our pointed javelins, whilst the angry swine Flies like a Parthian quiver from our rages, Struck with our well-steel'd darts All va

liant uses

(The food and nourishment of noble minds) In us two here shall perish; we shall die, (Which is the curse of honour !) lastly, Children of grief and ignorance.

Fr