To her lover To you I give myself, for I am yours. Again, to the duke— I'll have no father, if you be not he ;To Orlando I'll have no husband, if you be not he ;And to Phebe Nor ne'er wed woman, if you be not she. Such are the last words from Rosalind's own lips. But her poetical and even dramatic invention still presides over the scene, in that separate character of Hymen; the garb, the action, and the words of which we must necessarily suppose to be of her own device, even to that concluding "wedlock hymn" which commemorates the principal one of the matters that form the main subject of this drama-the grand comprehensive moral of which is, the eternal triumph of the genial sympathies and the social relations over every form of individual selfishness and misanthropy. No reader who shall have traced, with us, the course of Rosalind's feelings and deportment, through that first period of her fortunes when her heart is engrossed by sorrow for her father's banishment, and that second period when solicitude for her lover's requital of her affection, for his honour and his safety, fills her whole soul, and prompts her every sentence,— will need any further indication on our part, to shew him how foreign to the anxiously active state of our heroine's heart and mind throughout, is Mrs. Jameson's notion, for instance, about her "fleeting the time carelessly," "dancing on the greensward, and frolicking among green leaves"-a notion which at once brings down the "heavenly Rosalind" of Shakespeare's fancy and Orlando's love, to the level of a "Maid Marian," or, at most, a superior May-day queen. The same imperfect view of the character causes this critic to speak in terms comparatively slighting of the intellectual developement in Rosalind. She tells us:-"Rosalind has not the impressive eloquence of Portia, nor the sweet wisdom of Isabella. Her longest speeches are not her best," &c. But the dramatist has placed her in no circumstances that at all admit, much less demand from her, anything of that solemn. declamation which we hear from Isabella and from Portia. Any such declamatory strain, so out of place, from her lips to any of the individuals with whom she is brought into contact, would have testified, not in favour of the strength and brightness of her intellect, but against them. Neither is Rosalind any more inherently loquacious than she is declamatory: she never talks merely for talking's sake: strong feeling or earnest purpose dictates her every syllable. How this appears in all that relates immediately to her own interests and feelings, we have shown at large; but it seems requisite that, in a following paper, we should point attention to the unvarying consistency with which she is made to display the like ready sagacity, as well as abstract wisdom, in her intercourse with those personages in the drama of whom her own fortunes are entirely independent. It is important to shew, that even in the character of a moralist, Shakespeare has studiously given the ascendancy to her brightly glowing humanity, over the misanthropic melancholy of a Jaques, no less than over the cynical jocularity of a Touchstone. We shall also find it indispensable to complete the chain of argument in vindication of this nobly ideal Shakespearian character from critical perversion, by shewing how evidently in this instance, as in so many others, the critics have allowed their judgment respecting Shakespeare's conception, as laid before us in his uncorrupted page, to be warped by early and habitual impressions imbibed from the traditional notions that have been current on the actual stage. 227 3. .-ROSALIND WITH PHEBE, AND WITH JAQUES. [July 27th, 1844.] THE love affair between Phebe and Silvius contrasts beautifully with that between Orlando and Rosalind. The young shepherd's passionate devotion to "the proud disdainful shepherdess" yet unexperienced in the wounds invisible That love's keen arrows make, presents a charming foil to that mutual passion and affection in the two leading personages of the piece, which we find so constant and progressive from the moment of their first interview. It is also the principal means of developing that healthy proportion with which the poet has so exquisitely endowed this heroine's character, between the play of the feelings and the activity of the intellect. She is not love-sick and languishing; she is love-inspired, to more active benevolence and more happy invention. Thus, upon the old shepherd's intimation to her and Celia If you will see a pageant truly play'd If you will mark it, she eagerly replies— : Oh come, let us remove; So, indeed, she proves. In the scene that follows, to borrow one of her own subsequent expressions, she "speaks to some purpose." We can hardly, therefore, agree with Mrs. Jameson, that, in the dialogue in question, Phebe is more in earnest" than her 66 monitress. It is not, however, the wholesome lecture which she reads the scornful beauty, that begins to bring her to reason; but the impression which her look and accent make upon her in the assumed person of Ganymede, as described in that celebrated passage from Phebe's own lips, which we have cited in the first of these papers. Among those lines, how admirably expressive of that essential tenderness which Shakespeare has so constantly combined, in this character, with even the keenest flashes of wit and intellect-that fear of wounding, even in reproof -is Phebe's remark And faster than his tongue In the subsequent scene where she reads the letter. addressed to her as Ganymede by the shepherdess, her prompt and apt inventiveness is yet more conspicuous, in the means which she devises to increase the disabusing effect of the communication which she makes to Silvius of Phebe's treacherous offer, by first describing it to him, in exaggerated terms, as a letter of scornful defiance, though her counsel to the shepherd, not to "love such a woman," is as much thrown away upon the man whom, as she says, "love hath made a tame snake," as her exhortation to requital of his love had been upon the shepherdess herself. It is remarkable, that the dramatist seems to have studiously heightened the effect of these passages exhibiting the intellectual ascendancy of his heroine, by the juxtaposition in which he has placed them with others which peculiarly unfold her lively tenderness of feeling. The former scene comes upon her at the moment when she is impatiently expecting Orlando's fulfilment of his first wooing appointment: the latter, in like manner, comes just when she is anxiously awaiting him the second time, his hour being already expired; and is followed immediately by the agitating narrative which produces the fainting scene spoken of in our last paper. Let us here observe the art with which, after so inauspicious an opening of their courtship, a happy union is brought about between the shepherd and shepherdess without violating probability. First, the instant fulfilment of her lover's prediction O dear Phebe, If ever (as that ever may be near) You meet in some fresh cheek the power of fancy, Then, her first sympathetic relenting- Silvius, the time was, that I hated thee; Next, her wooing Ganymede by the very lips of Good shepherd, tell this youth what 'tis, to love. Sil. It is, to be all made of sighs and tears ; It is, to be all made of faith and service; It is, to be all made of fantasy, All made of passion, and all made of wishes; All adoration, duty, and obeisance, All humbleness, all patience, and impatience,- And so am I for Phebe. Thus, the very eloquence which she borrows to plead her own passion, is made to appeal to her awakened feelings more impressively than ever on her lover's behalf. So that when, at last, the flow of those feelings in their original channel is suddenly and hopelessly stopped by the discovery of the real sex of the seeming youth, we can well believe the disappointed shepherdess where, turning to her constant adorer, she says in conclusion Thy faith my fancy to thee doth combine. Over all this, however, the beneficently inventivel genius of Rosalind presides. But it is the contact into which she is brought with the great misanthrope X |