Miserable man! He had yet to learn how much heavier a burden his heart will have to bear. Here follows one of those exquisite scenes with which Shakespeare so often enriches his plays, in the creative exuberance of his imagination, and prompted by the subtle sense of what is wanted to put his audience in the right mood for what is next to follow. After all the prophetic vehemence of Paulina and the insane passion of Leontes, he seems to have felt that something in a gentler strain was wanted to calm the emotions of his hearers, and lift them into a serener air, before showing Hermione upon her trial. This he has done by a brief dialogue between Cleomenes and Dion, which takes us with them to the temple at Delphi, chosen by Apollo as the mouthpiece of his oracles : "Cleo. The climate's delicate; the air most sweet; Fertile the isle; the temple much surpassing The common praise it bears. Dion. For most it caught me, the celestial habits,― Even then will rush to knowledge. And gracious be the issue!" How much does this scene suggest, and in such brief compass! What a prelude, also, to the great scene, in which we are presently to see Hermione pleading her cause before the assembled judges, and all "who please to come and hear"! This is a scene which makes a large demand upon the resources of the actress, both personal and mental. With enfeebled health, and placed in a most ignominious position, Hermione must be shown to maintain her queenly dignity, and to control her passionate emotion under an outward bearing of resigned fortitude and almost inconceivable forbearance. In my early studies for the imI shall report, personation of Hermione, and in my acting of the character, I used to find myself imagining the procession of the queen and her suite through the streets, "i' the open air," from the prison, where she Methinks I so should term them,—and the reverence Of the grave wearers. Oh, the sacri fice! had spent the last few weeks, to the Hall of Justice. Her ladies are by her side, not weeping now, for their mistress had shown them how to bear affliction. The fragile form, the sad, far away looking eyes, the pale but lovely face, so stricken with suffering, reveal too well all that she has been passing through. Whatever impression of the queen's guilt may have been raised in the people's mind by the sudden flight of Polixenes and his followers, her look and bearing, I felt, must dispel every thought save that of the cruel indignity with which she had been treated. No taunting voice would be raised. The rumour would have gone abroad that the young Prince Mamillius had been denied access to her, that the newly born babe, her one solace in her prison, had been taken from her and cast out to die a cruel death. The people would think, too, of the indecent haste which was now hurrying her to her trial before the Court of Justice, with no allowance for the time of rest, which, after the trials of maternity, 'longs to women of all fashion." Had she turned her head towards the crowd, she would have seen the men with bowed heads and looks of reverence and pity,—the women with streaming eyes bent tenderly and sympathisingly upon her. But, no! her thoughts were away upon the scene that awaited her. Would her strength avail for the strain which she knew was presently to be put upon it, when alone, unaided, she must plead her cause, with more than her lifeher honour - at stake, and with him for her accuser, who should best have known how her whole nature belied his accusation? Sorely, indeed, does she need that the heavens shall look "with an aspect more favourable” upon her. In the Hall of Justice, Leontes, seated, surrounded by the lords of his Court, opens the proceedings by protestations-how false, we know of his grief at being constrained to bring his queen to trial in person. In obedience to his command, Hermione is brought in guarded, attended by Paulina and her ladies. She bows respectfully to the king, and is conducted to a dais, on which a cushioned chair has been allotted to her opposite to the king. What a contrast do the royal pair present? Leontes, restless, feverish, irritable, trying to mask his intention to hear nothing that runs counter to his foregone conclusion, under the transparently unreal semblance of a simple desire for justice; Hermione, self-controlled, queenly, calm with the quiet courage of the martyr, prepared to lose her life, but resolute to vindicate her honour. The indictment is read, charging her with adultery with Polixenes, and with conspiring with him and Camillo against her husband's life. Rising from her seat, and with a voice in which the effects of her recent sufferings may be heard, she begins by expressing how bootless it must be for her to plead "not guilty," since the denial must rest solely upon her own testimony. Then, her voice deepening in tone as she proceeds, she enters on her defence "But thus; if powers divine Behold our human actions, as they do, I doubt not then but innocence shall make False accusation blush, and tyranny Tremble at patience. You, my lord, best know, And play'd to take spectators. For, So, and no other, as yourself com behold me, A fellow of the royal bed, which owe A moiety of the throne, a great king's daughter, The mother to a hopeful prince,-here standing To prate and talk for life and honour 'fore Who please to come and hear. For life, I prize it As I weigh grief, which I would spare: 'Tis a derivative from me to mine, Came to your court, how I was in your How merited to be so; since he came, The bound of honour, or in act or will Of all that hear me, and my near'st of kin Cry fie upon my grave! This noble pleading, however, brings from Leontes no response but this "I ne'er heard yet, That any of these bolder vices wanted Less impudence to gainsay what they did, Than to perform it first." How temperate, how forbearing is her reply!— "That's true enough; Though 'tis a saying, sir, not due to me. manded; Which not to have done, I think, had Both disobedience and ingratitude Even since it could speak, from an in- That it was yours. Now, for conspiracy I know not how it tastes; All I know of it, Is that Camillo was an honest man; Wotting no more than I, are ignorant. you know To this, with a voice trembling with emotion, and in it also something of impatience, Hermione replies "Sir, spare your threats: The bug which you would fright me with I seek. To me life can be no commodity. "You will not own it?" exclaims Leontes, in a transport of anger. More than may be laid to her I do give lost; for I do feel it gone, charge in name of fault, Hermione replies, "she must not acknowledge. For Polixenes," she continues "With whom I am accus'd, I do con- I lov'd him, as in honour he requir'd, come A lady like me; with a love, even such, VOL. CXLIX.-NO. DCCCCIII. But know not how it went." Hitherto she has borne with submission the insults and outrages heaped upon her,-forbearing directly to charge her wrongs upon Leontes. But now, as the thought of all she has been robbed of flashes upon her mind, her tones, laden with the anguish so long B suppressed, vibrate with impas- lord, who, like all his fellows, was, sioned intensity. we must think, by this time glad that judgment was thus taken out of the hands of their king: cry Upon this a cry echoes through the hall like a death-knell; the cry of a soul from which all happiness, all hope, are gone; the of a broken heart, which shakes every other in the assembled crowd; a cry that will ring in the ears of Leontes ever after, and that even now chases from his brain every mad delusion. Upon the instant his senses return to him, and all his monstrous distrust and cruelty and their consequences are seen by him in their true light : "Apollo's angry; and the heavens themselves Do strike at my injustice." Then, as he sees a commotion around Hermione,—she has fallen back in a swoon into the arms of her women, who are crowding around her, he cries, "How now there?" The answer comes from the lady whose warnings he had repelled with contumely: "This news is mortal to the queen: look down, And see what death is doing." Death! He will not believe it. "Her heart is but o'ercharged; she will recover." Fly to her side he dare not-he, unworthy to touch her whom he had so foully slandered. But as she is carried from the hall in the arms of her ladies, he says to them— "Beseech you, tenderly apply to her Some remedies for life." Then follows a burst of contrition, in which those better qualities are seen, which had won and kept for him until now the love of his pure, high-hearted queen. They come back as suddenly as they had left him. He beseeches Apollo to forgive his great profaneness "'gainst his oracle"; he will " new woo his queen, be reconciled to Polixenes, recall the good Camillo avowing at the same time his own guilty attempt to make him poison Polixenes. In the midst of these confessions he is interrupted by the return of Paulina with tidings of the yet heavier punishment which has overtaken him. She will not spare him. Into her lips Shakespeare seems Greek tragedians put into those as if he wished to put, as the of the Chorus, the concentrated judgment of every man and woman in his kingdom: "Thy tyranny, Together working with thy jealousies, Fancies too weak for boys, too green and idle |