Did softly press the rushes, ere he 'waken'd
The chastity he wounded.- Cytherea,

How bravely thou becom'st thy bed! fresh lily,
And whiter than the sheets! that I might touch!
But kiss, one kiss! rubies unparagon'd!

How dearly they do't! 'Tis her breathing that
Perfumes the chamber thus; the flame o' the taper
Bows toward her, and would underpeep her lids
To see th' inclosed lights now canopied

Under these windows, white and azure, lac'd

With blue of heaven's own tinct; on her left breast
A mole cinque-spotted like the crimson drops.

I' the bottom of a cowslip."

The words in which she mourns the loss of her bracelet, which Iachimo had stolen for the purpose of convincing her husband of her infidelity, are beautiful beyond description:

"Go, bid my woman

Search for a jewel that too casually

Hath left my arm. It was thy master's: 'shrew me,

If I would lose it for a revenue

Of any king in Europe. I do think

I saw't this morning; confident I am

Last night 'twas on mine arm. I kiss'd it.

I hope it has not gone to tell my lord

That I kiss aught but he."

It has been said that " our consciousness that the bracelet is really gone to bear false witness against her, adds an inexpressibly touching effect to the simplicity and tenderness of the sentiment."

In studying this play it is difficult to believe that Posthumus deserves forgiveness. His wager about his wife's chastity and his readiness to believe her guilty, to say nothing of his rashness in pursuing his revenge, one would think could scarcely excite any other feeling than that of contempt. But then, on the other hand, we must not

forget Imogen's unconquerable love for him, and that she herself forgave him, and that he is described as one who sat among men like a descended god, with an honor about him more than mortal seeming.

HAMLET.

IN discussing, some years ago, with a friend, the merits of Edwin Booth's performance of HAMLET, he urged as an objectionable feature in Booth's delineation of the character that he did his utmost to convey the impression that HAMLET'S madness was not real but only feigned. My friend argued that there was nothing in the play to warrant such a conclusion. He said it was certainly SHAKSPEARE'S intention to define clearly and unmistakably one of the most palpable, as well as one of the most interesting phases of insanity, and that we could not assign any other reason than madness for his wild and irregular disposition, and pointless and purposeless conduct.

I

I attempted to refute this theory by suggesting that any refined and cultivated nature would have acted just as HAMLET did, if surrounded by the same circumstances. said that, in order to understand fully the secret workings of HAMLET's conscience, we must look upon him as a being compounded, like other men, with a goodly share of both the faults and virtues of humanity, and that we must remember the horror of his situation, the supernatural visitation of his father's spirit in arms, and the awful command it gave him "not to let the royal bed of Denmark be a couch for luxury and damned incest." These suggestions were met by a eulogy upon the character of Ophelia. She was described as the most perfect incarna

tion of virtue, of gentleness and innocence. She was compared to the rose of May-O flower too soon faded?"— to the summer cloud, the snow-flake, the voice of silvery fountains, the charm of earliest birds, and to all that is lovely and lovable in the worlds of reality and imagination.

Being unable to recall any considerable portion of the text by which I hoped to sustain the position that HAMLET's madness was assumed, I was at length silenced with the exclamation that no one but a brute or a madman "loosed out of hell," could outrage the exquisite sensibilities of a woman constituted like Ophelia, by ordering her to a nunnery, asking her if she would be a breeder of sinners, and saying, "God hath given you one face, and you give yourselves another; you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nickname God's creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance."

I am free to confess that I was so impressed with this conversation that I determined immediately to study the play with the greatest care, and to read everything that I could procure in relation to it, with a view of settling definitely and forever in my mind this perplexing feature in the character of this darling of the English stage-this prince courtier, scholar and gentleman, whose subtle arguments and philosophical meditations penetrate into the profoundest recesses of the soul. My study and researches have been rewarded with the most fixed and settled convictions that HAMLET was not mad neither partially nor wholly and that SHAKSPEARE never intended to convey the idea of madness any further than to surround the play with an air of mystery for the purpose of heightening its beauty and sublimity.

In the earliest edition of HAMLET, that of 1603, we find that SHAKSPEARE made the description of HAMLET'S

madness much stronger than he did in the amended copy. The edition of 1608 was doubtless an imperfect copy of the first conception of the poet. The later edition was such an improvement on the first that the date of it has generally been regarded as the period that marks the birth of that thoughtful philosophy so wonderfully portrayed in all the carefully-elaborated works of the author.

In the first copy the King speaks of HAMLET as having "lost the very heart of all his sense," while in the amended one he speaks of him simply as being "put from the understanding of himself."

In the first copy, Polonius speaks of his madness changing by continuance "into this frenzy which now possesses him." In the revised copy we have “ a fast, a watch, a weakness, a lightness, and a madness."

Charles Knight, one of the most indefatigable of Shakspearean scholars, remarks that the reason of this change is that "SHAKSPEARE did not, either in his first sketch or his amended copy, intend his audience to believe that HAMLET was essentially mad, and he removed, therefore, the strong expressions which might encourage that belief."

Dr. Johnson thought HAMLET's madness feigned, but was silly enough to add that it "excited much mirth."

Coleridge has, perhaps, shown a more critical appreciation of HAMLET than any of the other modern Shakspearean scholars (unless, indeed, we except some of the German critics, Lessing and Schlegel for instance), takes the position that HAMLET'S wildness is but half false, that he plays that subtle trick of pretending to act only when he is very near really being what he acts. Coleridge, however, reconciles HAMLET'S sanity in the scene with Ophelia on the ground that "the Prince perceived, from the strange and forced manner of Ophelia, that the sweet girl was not acting a part of her own, but was a decoy, and his after