unlimited: Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the liberty, these are the only men.

Ham.-O Jephthah, judge of Israel—what a treasure hadst thou!

Pol.-What a treasure had he, my lord?
Ham.-Why-One fair daughter, and no more,
The which he loved passing well.

Pol.-[Aside.]-Still on my daughter.
Ham.—Am not I i' the right, old Jephthah?
Pol.-If you call me Jephthah, my lord, I have a
daughter, that I love passing well.

Ham.-Nay, that follows not.

Pol.-What follows then, my lord?

Ham.-Why, As by lot, God wot, and then, you know, It came to pass, As most like it was-The first row of the pious chanson will show you more; for look, my abridge

ment comes.

The Players enter, and, at HAMLET's request, the first player recites a speech.

Ham.-'T is well; I'll have thee speak out the rest of this soon. Good, my lord, will you see the players weli bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used; for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time: After your death you were better have a bad epitaph, than their ill report while you live.

Pol.-My lord, I will use them according to their desert.

Ham.-Much better: Use every man after his desert, and who shall 'scape whipping! Use them after your own honor and dignity: The less they deserve the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in.

Pol.-Come, sirs.

[Exit POLONIUS with some of the Players.]

Ham.-Follow him, friends: we'll hear a play to morrow. Dost thou hear me, old friend; can you play the murder of Gonzago?

1st Play.-Ay, my lord.

Ham.—We'll have it to-morrow night. You could, for a need, study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines, which I would set down, and insert in 't? could you not? 1st Play.-Ay, my lord.

Ham. Very well-follow that lord; and look you mock him not. Exit Player.] My good friends [To Ros. and GUIL.], I'll leave you till night: you are welcome to Elsinore.

Ros.-Good, my lord.

[Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.] Ham.-Ay, so, heaven be wi' you.-Now I am alone.. O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I! Is it not monstrous, that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his own conceit, That from her working all his visage wann'd; Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect, A broken voice, and his whole function suiting With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing! For Hecuba!

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,

That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion,
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears,
And cleave the general ear, with horrid speech;
Make mad the guilty, and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant; and amaze, indeed,
The very faculties of eyes and ears.

Yet I,

A dull and muddy-mettled' rascal, peak,

Like John a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
Upon whose property, and most dear life,
A damned defeat was made. Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?

Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat, As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this?

Ha!

Why, I should take it: for it cannot be,
But I am pigeon-livered and lack gall,^
To make oppression bitter; or, ere this,
I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave's offal:

Why, what an ass am I? This is most brave;

Fye upon 't! foh! About my brains! Humph! I have

heard

That guilty creatures sitting at a play,

Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul, that presently
They have proclaimed their malefactions;

For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players
Play something like the murder of my father,
Before mine uncle: I'll observe his looks;

I'll tent him to the

quick; if he do blench,
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen,
May be a devil: and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and, perhaps,
Out of my weakness, and my melancholy
(As he is very potent with such spirits),
Abuses me to damn me: I'll have grounds
More relative than this: the play 's the thing,
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.

[Exit.]

WOMAN'S RIGHTS.

ADAPTED FROM MY OPINIONS AND BETSEY BOBBITT'S."

SCENE-A Neu England kitchen. JOSIAH ALLEN blacking his boots. SAMANTHA, his wife, darning socks. Enter BETSEY BOBBITT, an elderly spinster, dressed in very youthful style. She shakes hands with both.

BETSEY

ETSEY-I saw you was at the lecture last night
Samantha.

Samantha-Yes; considerin' your sentiments, I hardly expected to see you there.

Betsey-Well, I was overpersuaded to go; but I did n't like it any better than I expected. I don't believe in women's having an, right to vote; it aint their spear, as I said to our young preacher when he was walking home with me.

Saman. Yes, I see him tryin' to unhitch your shawlfringe, which had hold of his button.

Betsey-But he did n't struggle long, and I did n't struggle at all; I thought it wasn't my place. So we walked home together, and says I to him, "Don't you think, with me, that it is not woman's. spear to vote? Don't you think it is her nature to be clinging?" Heaven knows I do!" said he, and he felt it, too, for he tugged so hard at the shawl-fringe in the ardor of his feelings that I had to beg him not to tear it.

66

Saman. That was the time I saw the look of stern despair on his classic features.

Josiah-Well, now, I agree with Betsey there. Woman aint got no business voting. She is too fraguile; she aint got the rekisite strength. Samantha, I see the boy

has come for the cans of milk. I've got my shoes offwould you jist go and put 'em on the wagon for me?

Saman.-If I am too fraguile to handle a paper vote, I am too fraguile to lift one hundred and fifty pounds of milk.

[JOSIAH puts on his shoes and silently goes out.] Betsey-It's so revolting to female delicacy to go to the poles and vote. Most all the female aristocracy of Jonesville agree with me in this.

Saman.-Female delicacy! is female delicacy a plant that withers in the shadow of the poles and flourishes in every other condition?

Enter JOSIAH.

Josiah Don't get so excited, Samantha!

Saman. You jist go on blacking your boots, Josiah Allen, I aint talking to you. Betsey, is it any more indelicate for a female woman to dress herself in a modest and Christian manner, with a braige veil over her face, and go to the pole and decently and quietly lay her vote on to it, than to be introduced to a man who, for all she knows, is a retired pirate, and let him hug her by the hour to the tune of a fiddle or a base violin ?

Betsey-It would devour too much of her time. She could n't vote and attend to the other duties which are incumbient upon her.

Saman.-Women find plenty of time for their everlasting croshain' and tattin', for their mats and their tidies, their flirtations, their feather flowers and their bead flowers, and hair flowers, and burr flowers, and Oriental paintings, and Grecian paintings, and face paintings. Why, they spend more time frizzling their front hair than it would take 'em to learn the Constitution of the United States by heart; and if they get a