upon him a bride whom he did not wish, still his pride of nobility would not have been satisfied; and perhaps the hereditary prejudices of his station would even have released him from the vow made by this gift of the ring to a woman of birth so inferior to his own. For this reason, the second condition is necessary that Giletta shall not only bear the ring on her finger, but have a child by him, if she hopes to conquer his aversion. He would then be obliged, for the child's sake, to overlook all respects; for the child is another self, his flesh and blood, as it is that of the mother with whom it is to reconcile him, and to serve as a mediator. This sentiment is beautifully expressed by Sacontala, who belongs to the same family, in the Mahabharat (Fr. Schlegel's Works, ix., 299 et seq.)—

"Garments of silk, and woman, and waves of swelling ocean,

Are not so soft to the touch as the touch of a babe's embraces.

Thus art thou soothed here by this child with his glances of fondness; Earth has no sweeter joy than the touch of a baby's caresses.

Born of thy body is he, flesh of thy flesh begotten

See him, a second self, like a face in the fountain mirrored.

As from the fire of the hearth they take the fire for the altar,
So is he of thyself a part, but thyself undiminished.

Oft as the spouse to his spouse approacheth, himself is renascent
Of her who becometh a mother through him, as the sages have spoken.”

Beltram's pride of nobility is compelled to give way to the irresistible charm of the child for the father, who sees himself born again in him: for the voice of Nature silences all considerations of rank and prejudice. We even overlook the circumstance that Giletta has gained the ring in a manner which makes it no longer a pledge of promised fidelity and conjugal love, for the promise was not made to her; and it was unnecessary for Boccaccio to give Beltram two children from Giletta instead of one.

We might suspect a nearer connexion of the story of Sacontala with that of Giletta, inasmuch as in the former the

ring and the child also occur, with the same meaning and operation: but the present state of our knowledge of the story of Sacontala does not allow this conjecture to be confirmed. We are acquainted with the story in two forms, differing considerably from each other. In the episode of the Mahabharat, of which we have just quoted a fragment, the ring does not occur; and it is not clear, from the fragment given by Schlegel, why Dushmanta at first rejects and denies Sacontala, until at last the recognition and reconciliation with the rejected follows that speech of hers. Perhaps, as Schlegel remarks, it was done to try her; probably because Dushmanta feared that suspicion of the child's legitimacy might arise, if he so easily consented to the recognition. In the drama of Kalidas, which will be known to our readers from the translation of G. Forster, Sacontala, after marrying Dushmanta, according to the form Gandharva, that is to say, by mutual agreement, without any other marriage ceremony, in her grief at the departure of her husband, has not noticed the angry saint, Durvasas, who enters her house as a guest; and for a punishment of this violation of hospitality, she is cursed by him :

"He of whom thou ponderest,

On whom thy heart with such a worship hangs,
While the pure jewel of a true devotion

Asks a guest's sacred rights, and asks in vain

He shall forget thee at your future meeting,

Even as the sobered reveller forgets

The senseless words his nightly wassail spake."

But he softens this curse by the addition that the enchantment shall disappear when her husband sees his ring again. This had been given her by Dushmanta, as a pledge of his truth, when she asked him, at their parting, "How long will my lord remember me?" but Sacontala has lost it; and when she is brought pregnant into the palace of the King, to be put in possession of her rights as a wife, she cannot overcome

H

the enchantment which clouds the memory of Dushmanta. She is therefore driven out of doors, but is led by her mother, the nymph Menaca, to the Palace of Aditi. The ring, which a fish had swallowed, is brought by a fisherman to Dushmanta, who at the sight of it remembers Sacontala and his vow. Here, therefore, the ring has the same signification as in the story; it is, indeed, a decisive ring, (it is called the fatal ring, in the English translation) but no enchanted ring, though it destroys an enchantment. The King has given it to Sacontala, as a pledge that he will not forget her; and this purpose it fully answers. Still it appears magical in its effects; and it does not, therefore, stand in the way of those who would consider a connexion between this and the novella, that in Boccaccio the ring of Beltram, according to his representation, possesses magical properties. It is worth while here to compare the story in Grimm, i. 365, and what is hereafter said of it. In Kalidas, Dushmanta finds Sacontala, after a long and vain search, in Aditi's palace, having before met with that son, as a young hero whom he had begotten of her immediately after their marriage. Thus the child does not appear, in Kalidas, in the same form as in our novella, and, as we have seen, in the Mahabharat; he does not cause the father to recognise his mother, but only makes known to him the discovery of the desired lost one. If, however, we might connect the two forms of the Sacontala, or assume, as is very probable, that, in its original form, the ring appeared in the same signification as in Kalidas, and the child in that of the Mahabharat, it would be impossible to doubt the identity of this story with that of Gilette.

X. MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

Mrs. Lennox, in her "Shakspeare Illustrated," has translated an episode in the fifth book of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso,1 as the probable source of this piece; but Farmer and Steevens have already remarked that the novella of Bandello is more similar to Shakespeare's story. In Ariosto is found only the first part of Hero's history, her false accusation: her apparent death, and final resuscitation, in which she is introduced to her former bridegroom as a relation of his first bride, and is

1 This tale was translated into English as early as 1565, by Peter Beverley: "Historie of Ariodanto and Jeneura, Daughter to the King of Scottes, in English verse," 16mo. Printed by Thomas East, n.d. The date of 1565 is taken from the Stationers' Registers. See Collier's Extracts, i., 140. It commences as follows:

66

'Amongst the vanquisht regions

That worthy Brute did winne,
There is a soyle, in these our dayes,
With ocean seas cloasde in,

That fertile is, and peopled well,

And stor❜d with pleasant fieldes,

And hath for tillage lucky land,

That yearly profit yieldes."

It is of extreme rarity, and a copy was sold, at the sale of the Gordonstoun collection, for £31 10s. Mr. Collier mentions that a "History of Ariodante and Geneuora" was played before Queen Elizabeth, by Mulcaster's children, in 1582-3. This is an extremely curious fact, and gives ground for a conjecture that the incidents of Shakespeare's play had been thus early employed in the English drama. According to Skottowe, the principal incident may be traced to a period as early as the date of the Spanish romance, "Tirant the White," composed in the dialect of Catalonia, about the year 1400.-Ed.

married to him, are the invention of Bandello. Shakespeare, nevertheless, may have known Ariosto's representation of this first part of the story, since, in his piece, as in Ariosto, the chambermaid plays the part of her mistress at the window, a circumstance which does not occur in Bandello. This variation he might, however, have invented himself, or borrowed from an imitation of Ariosto's story, in Spenser's "Fairy Queen" (book ii., ch. 4). If Shakespeare could not read Ariosto in the original, it was accessible to him in the translation by Harrington, published as early as 1591; or, indeed, he might have become acquainted with this very episode from a separate poetical translation by George Turbervile, which appeared a few years earlier.

As Dunlop conjectures (ii., 456), Ariosto, whom Bandello has perhaps copied, may himself have borrowed from the chivalric romance of "Tyran le Blanc," where the substance of the first part of our novel occurs for the first time. It is not requisite to give an extract from the splendid episode of Ariosto, since Eschenberg has already done so, and the Orlando Furioso is in every body's hands, by the translation of Gries and Streckfuss. The ninth novella in the introduction to Cinthio's Hecatommithi also represents a similar deceit as is here practised upon Fenicie; but there it is contrived by a servant-maid, who has fallen in love with her master, against her mistress.

According to the assumption of English critics, the novella of Bandello was known to Shakespeare by the translation in Belleforest's "Tragic Stories" (Lyons, 1594, 12mo., vol. iii.) It is one of the best productions of this novelist; and Shakespeare has kept very close to it, in the first part of his play: the comic portion, the loves of Benedict and Beatrice, appears to be entirely his own invention.

The content of this novella, as a popular story, is very

'This translation does not appear to be extant. The information is given on the authority of Harington.-ED.