volved, and that in the eloquent climactic passage where Juliet expectantly awaits the coming of the husband she has just married, it is a point that will be well worth settling permanently.

In starting out, let us keep one fact to the fore: Shakespeare was always true to human nature in any set of circumstances. He did not deal in elaborate mythological allusions and ingenious figures of speech in and for themselves; his expressions are such as will throw the deepest and most searching light upon the human heart, and that with an especial regard for the character speaking. Second: he does not jump quickly from one figure of speech to another with such mere liveliness of fancy as many critics think. He did this advisedly according to what might be accomplished by it; and in other cases he shows a remarkable faculty for sticking to the subject, so to speak, in long comparisons which are especially calculated to throw complete and dwelling light on the spirit of the speaker. He did this especially at those places where he wished to engage our minds for a longer space upon some point important in the action or in our conception of the character. The present is a case in point. Shakespeare fully expected, when he wrote this passage, that because he had paved the way and thrown about the word so many figurative expressions, all tending to the same point of view, we would understand the

Being of this might explain

sense of "runaway's" at once and gather the beauty of this way of saying it. nature, it is a passage which I quickly by internal evidence alone; but as it is a case where scholarship has been at work, almost two hundred years, any seeming solution of mine would naturally be received with skepticism even though it were plausible. I must therefore not only prove it internally but prove it again by reference to other passages in the plays which show Shakespeare's natural point of view in just such cases as Juliet's.

As all lovers of Shakespeare are not supposed to be perfect in Elizabethan English, we shall set "runaway's" aside a moment while we dispose of the word "wink." This word, in Shakespeare's time, was not confined to its present usual meaning of shutting the eyes momentarily. It meant also the shutting of the eyes with the intention of keeping them closed, in which sense it is used repeatedly by Shakespeare. This is well enough understood by Shakespeare scholars, and was known to all those editors who have made an attempt to read the passage.

Let us now turn our attention to "Henry V," v, 2, 327. We here see Shakespeare dealing with the subject of woman's modesty. Henry is trying to win the hand of Katherine the French princess. He is now conversing with Burgundy upon her reticence. Burgundy describes the princess as "a maid yet rosed over

with the virgin crimson of modesty." Her maiden modesty and backwardness to consent to marriage he explains as due to "her naked seeing self." To which Henry replies, "Yet they do wink and yield, as love is blind and enforces."

There cannot, of course, be any doubt as to the meaning of wink as used in this connection. We see then that Shakespeare, wishing to put stress on maiden modesty, takes the standpoint that it will only yield under conditions of darkness. Now Juliet is in a like position in regard to what she calls love's amorous rites. She is waiting secretly in the shadows of her father's orchard for the appearance of the husband whom she has married but a few hours before and whom she is to receive in her own chamber for the first time that night. She was scarce acquainted with him when she married him; she is a maid like Katherine though married. We find her modesty accentuated by having her look forward to the time when strange love, grown bold, think true love acted simple modesty." At present, as she waits anxiously in the orchard, she has neither grown bold nor does the act of love seem modest to her. Here then we find two parallel cases as regards ante-nuptial modesty, and in both cases we see the word "wink" chosen. In Katherine's case there is no question as to its referring to darkness, and the wink refers to her own eyes. We shall therefore conclude,

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tentatively, that in Juliet's case it is the same. It is her own eyes that are supposed to wink; but as darkness is just falling it allows of this winking, or blinding, being accomplished in a different way.

But if it is her own sight she is referring to, we now have to find a fit meaning for runaway's, because the text reads, "that runaway's eyes may wink." If we are going to assume that it is her eyes that are referred to, then she is the runaway; and now the question arises: In what sense may she be considered a runaway? That she has simply run away from home, being out in her father's orchard, is hardly satisfactory; it does not fit the elaborate figure of speech. To regard her as a runaway merely because she went secretly to Friar Laurence to be married proves equally futile when put to the test. For we are still left with the problem of finding out how or why, in that sense of running away, she should wish her eyes to close or wink? She is contemplating actual darkness in the oncoming of night, from which it will be seen that her having merely run away from home for a while that day does not apply with any sense to her present vein of thought. Even the poorest of critics, with few exceptions, have seen that the solution here is not to come from a very literal point of view. Whatever Shakespeare's meaning may be, the word has some figurative application which is more illuminating.

Let us turn next to "All's Well that Ends Well." The chaste Diana, whose Italian upbringing, like Juliet's, has made womanly modesty the one great meaning of life to her, finds herself contemplating a crucial moment. She is dealing with Bertram under circumstances of secrecy; their relations, if Bertram has his way, are to be by stealth. Certain words rise to her lips as she contemplates the step of deserting her colors and leaving her girlhood forever behind her. As she expresses it, she is in a pass where "we" (meaning women generally) "forsake ourselves." Now forsake certainly means to desert or give up what we feel ought to be clung to; and so, reading this "All's Well" passage in the strict light of the context we find one of Shakespeare's women regarding herself, in connection with the giving up of her principles of maidenhood, as a deserter or runaway. It is very apt and luminous of her inner life. In "Romeo and Juliet" we see Shakespeare dealing with a young Italian girl of the same type of womanhood. She and Romeo have been secretly married, and in the evening of that same day we see her waiting, in a transport of anticipation, among the orchard trees. The blood has mounted to her cheeks as she sees her girlhood about to be relinquished; she has a lively sense of the too garish day; and being so modest she wishes night to fall speedily so that her own eyes may wink, or be blinded; for, as she says: