duced to equalise the doubles in the comedy. But she grew upon him as he wrote. She bears a strong family likeness to Adriana, though there is no possibility of mistaking the sisters. Though she lectures Adriana on the beauty of submissiveness, in tones suitable for Petruchio's converted Kate, she reproaches him whom she believes to be her brother-inlaw in no measured tones: "Be not thy tongue thine own shame's orator!" When the Abbess rates Adriana, she rises hotly in her sister's defence, "She never reprehended him but mildly, When he demeaned himself rough, rude and wildly. (To Adriana) Why bear you these rebukes and answer not?" Adriana: She did betray me to my own reproof." It is Luciana who advises her sister, " Complain unto the Duke of this indignity." "Kneel to the Duke before he pass the Abbey." It is Luciana who makes this possible, and with a cry, "Justice against the Abbess!" surprises and arrests the Duke. His conscience is engaged to defend Adriana. He forgets all about Egeon, whom he is leading like an ox to the slaughter, and summons the Abbess. Luciana's charm and fearlessness had bewitched and conquered Antipholus of Syracuse; her acute intelligence seems to have made her the first among them who divined that her wooer was another and a better man than her brother of Ephesus, when she yields in her little phrase," I'll fetch my sister, to get her goodwill.” And here, before the Duke she moves Providence and fate, secures the opportunity of justice, and directs the paths of all the party, as well as of her own. The twins meet face to face, the knots unloose, the tangles disappear, the Abbess on the one side, and Ægeon on the other, act chorus and witnesses, and find themselves, Ephesian law is forgotten, the Duke takes absolute power over it. Adriana is no more jealous, nor her husband unfaithful, and Luciana makes odds even by pairing with Antipholus of Syracuse. Shakespeare made of it a better play than Plautus did, but he did not do it as well as he himself was yet to do. It is a long leap from 'The Comedy of Errors' to 'Much Ado about Nothing,' but there is a link. The serious part of the plot is based on a novel of Bandello and on the story of Ariodante and Ginevra in Ariosto's Orlando Furioso❜ (5th can.) Harrington's translation was printed by Richard Field in 1591, and Shakespeare may well have read it in his friend's back shop. The dramatist somewhat lightens the plot. The waiting woman Margaret is made innocent of everything but stupidity in allowing herself to be imposed upon by her lover. The cruel and unnecessary suffering of Hero is not permitted too long to harrow the minds of the audience. It was the master-mind who could provide, through the heavy folly and humours of Dogberry and Verges, the knowledge which led to the salvation of the innocent victim of a foul crime. And out of the limitless wealth of his treasurehouse the dramatist is liberal enough to give us another secondary plot, running concurrently with the main plot, in which Benedick and Beatrice were the chief characters, his very own. They have brightened the lives of men ever since they were invented, and they were, even in his own times, sufficient to draw a crowd on their own account under the title of Benedick and Betteris.' It is true that he had first sketched them in Berowne and Rosalyne, but as Berowne and Rosalyne they would not have gained the mastery over us that Benedick and Beatrice have done. But if Beatrice was evolved from Rosalyne, in her sparkling wit, and her knowledge of its valuelessness before the sad mysteries of human suffering, she also derived some of her characteristics from Luciana of Ephesus, the loyal, fearless and protecting spirit. It is while she is part of the tragic plot that her true womanly heart finds its rôle. She stands by and encourages her cousin in the first shock. She waits her time, till she sees that all the men, friend, lover, father, could believe the slander even without questioning it, and her challengers could leave their tender victim, fainting 1 "A history of Ariodante and Ginevra," was played before the Qucen at Court, 1581-2." neglected under their wrongs. She understands her cousin's soul, she knows that such slander could not be true, and flinging her strong protecting and loving arms round the maligned girl, she cries aloud, "O! on my soul, my cousin is belied." She does not move one of them, except perhaps the Friar, who was with her from the first. But Benedick pauses, bewildered at the turn of events, and meditates. He was naturally prepared to trust his friends, but he at least had a clue in his suspicion of Don John. He waits, casting in his lot with the afflicted, by the strange attraction of Beatrice in a mood new to him, as well as by the spell of injured innocence. He hears the simple plan to awake compunction in the heart of the bridegroom, and promises secrecy. That is not enough for Beatrice. If there is to be any reality in their strange wooing, Benedick must be her knight in danger as in peace, in sorrow as in mirth. He must be knight to all distressed ladies; he must be Hero's champion too, "Kill Claudio!" He recognises the justice of her claim on him, even against his friend. But he does not discover the secret. It was the Dogberry and Verges episode, kindling to laughter, which did the work of a knight. They were made the strange instruments of Providence, in revealing the truth, hidden from the wise and prudent, from the passionate complainant, and the helpless defendant. "What your wisdoms could not discover, these shallow fools have brought to light " ( Much Ado,' v. 1) Beatrice forgives her knight his lack of success, because of his good will, and in the calmness after pain of the second celebration of the marriage solemnities, she drops back to her mirthful self, and accepts her fate with sparkling repartee, and inward content. The story of Much Ado About Nothing' leads on to that of Othello. The story of Othello is taken from the Hecatommithi of Cinthio, Decad. III. Novel 7. There are no names given to any of the characters except that of Desdemona, the others are The Moor, the Lieutenant, and the Ensign. Shakespeare introduces the characters of Roderigo, Brabantio and Emilia. In the novel Iago is made a coward as well as a villain. He hated Desdemona because she had ignored his advances, he poisoned Othello's soul against her, and tempted him to consent to her murder. They did this together, and brought down a beam in the house to make others believe that it had killed her by accident. Retribution came to Othello by the action of others. How much does Shakespeare do to raise the story, and even the characters in it, to make of the feeble novel a great tragedy. He makes even Iago better, a good soldier, a capable man, as well as a scheming villain, Mephistophelean in his scheming, to account for his power over the simpler, nobler nature of Othello. Shakespeare raises the character of the Moor to grandeur. The story had made the strange pair live happily for some time in Venice before the crisis, so that the Moor was the more to blame in suspecting a tried and trusted wife, on the word of an outsider. The drama shows him in the first few months of wedded bliss, in the midst of the wonder and glory of it; an inner doubt of his own worthiness of her, once banished, rises again to weight the suggestions brought by Iago. The great pure tender love that fills his heart for his fair wife, so different from any he had ever known, is by its very force and humility the more susceptible to poison. He must needs have been a great man, with the magic spell of a great soul, to have won the love of such a lady. In Desdemona, Shakespeare paints the white-souled chastity of an Isabella, but he also paints "the little pitted speck," the weakness that feared to be always quite true. The story tells us that she had married against the wishes of her relatives, it says nothing of a father. Shakespeare gives her one in Brabantio. She leaves the grieved and angry old man against his will. It has been a runaway marriage. Hence the venom of the whisper, "She hath deceived her father, and may thee." We are made to feel that but for that remembrance Othello might not have altogether disbelieved her protestations. That thought blinds him to the generosity of Desdemona's attempt to take upon herself the blame for her death, to save him from the consequences. "She's like a liar gone to burning hell. "Twas I that killed her." The woman, Emilia, whom Shakespeare has given to her and to us, like Luciana and Beatrice, understands her lady, and fearlessly charges the General, "O, the more angel she, and thou the blacker devil!" Shakespeare's Othello does not let Iago tamper with his sacrifice, nor does he seek to shield himself behind any screen. Desdemona's death is the end of his life. Emilia also had loved and trusted her husband too well. When she hears, to her horror, that he had been the deceiver of Othello, she reiterates with half-paralysed astonishment the words " My husband?" while her thoughts feverishly piece together past incidents in a new light, which makes the horrid revelation clear to her soul. She had been his dupe in procuring the handkerchief? He had intentionally deceived her, as he had deceived Othello? Her love dies instantly. Loyal to her mistress, fearless even after she had grasped the meaning of Othello's threats, she cries to the murderer, Thou hast not half that power to do me harm, As ignorant as dirt. Thou hast done a deed I care not for thy sword-I'll make thee known. Though I lost twenty lives: Help, help, ho, help, The Moor has killed my mistress, murder, murder!" When they come to hear her testimony, though she had lost love for Iago, that sense of justice, mercy, and fairplay, so common amongst good women, makes her give Iago one last chance, "He says thou told'st him that his wife was false. I know thou didst not, thou'rt not such a villain? But when he barefacedly acknowledges this, and bids her hold her peace, he kills the last vestige of love and consideration, "Twill out, 'twill out! I hold my peace? Sir, no, no, I will speak, as liberal as the north!" Iago's last crime ends her life, 66 "O, lay me by my mistress' side, What did thy song bode, Lady? Hark, canst thou hear me? I will play the swan, There is not in all Shakespeare a picture so terrible in its |