I do refer me to the oracle;

Apollo be my judge.

I Lord.

This your request

Is altogether just therefore bring forth,

And in Apollo's name, his oracle.

[Exeunt certain officers.]

Hermione. The Emperor of Russia was my father;

O that he were alive, and here beholding

His daughter's trial! that he did but see
The flatness of my misery; yet with eyes
Of pity, not revenge!

"Hermione is chaste,

The oracle returns this answer: Polixenes blameless, Camillo a true subject, Leontes a jealous tryant, his innocent babe truly begotten; and the King shali live without an heir if that which is lost be not found."

Leontes. Hast thou read truth?
Officer.

As it is here set down.

Ay, my lord, even so

Leontes. There is no truth at all i' the oracle !

The sessions shall proceed; this is mere falsehood.

At this moment arrives news that Mamillius, the pretty boy torn from his mother's side, who has been ailing ever since he lost her care, is dead. Hermione faints away. Leontes is suddenly struck with the idea that he may have been unjust. He orders his wife's removal, and that care shall be taken of her, but he does not spring to her side. He cannot yet forgive her his own fault, but as he thinks over the matter his senses return to him, and he says:

For, being transported by my jealousies

To bloody thoughts and to revenge, I chose
Camillo for the minister, to poison

My friend Polixenes; which had been done
But that the good mind of Camillo tardied
My swift command; though I, with death and with
Reward, did threaten and encourage him.

He, most humane

And filled with honor, to my kingly guest
Unclasped my practice; quit his fortunes here,
Which you knew great, and to the certain hazard
Of all uncertainties himself commended,

No richer than his honor. How he glisters
Thorough my rust! And how his piety

Does my deeds make the blacker!

In this speech the more Leontes says, the more he works himself up to a sense of the blackness of his injurious suspicions.

In this stage of his repentance Paulina rushes in with news of Hermione's death, and assuredly does not spare her royal A sentence in her speech bears out my description of Leontes as a difficult husband,-"Thy bygone fooleries were but spices to it!"

master.

O thou tyrant!

Do not repent these things, for they are heavier
Than all thy woes can stir; therefore betake thee
To nothing but despair. A thousand knees,
Ten thousand years together, naked, fasting,
Upon a barren mountain, and still winter,
In storm perpetual, could not move the gods
To look that way thou wert!

Thou canst not speak too much; I have deserved

All tongues to talk their bitterest.

1 Lord [to Paulina].

Say no more;

Howe'er the business goes, you have made fault
I' the boldness of your speech.

Paulina.

I am sorry for 't.

All faults I make, when I shall come to know them,

I do repent. Alas! I have showed too much

The rashness of a woman.

To the noble heart.

He is touched

[She turns to Leontes.] What's gone and what's past help Should be past grief. Do not receive affliction

At my petition, I beseech you; rather

Let me be punished that have reminded you

Of what you should forget. Now, good my liege,
Sir, royal sir, forgive a foolish woman;

The love I bore your queen,
lo, fool again!
I'll speak of her no more, nor of your children.
I'll not remember you of my own lord,
Who is lost too. Take your patience to you,
And I'll say nothing.

Scene 3.

Antigonus, with the babe, has reached the sea-coast of Bohemia. The babe is laid upon the grass, and Antigonus is chased away by a bear. Then a shepherd comes upon the scene, followed by his clownish boy. He begins grumbling at some hunters who have driven off two of his sheep. He will never find them, he says; or if he does, it will be by the sea-shore, browsing upon ivy. How Shakspeare knew the secrets of nature! A great many years ago I heard a gentleman in Virginia remark that sheep were often poisoned by eating shoots of ivy.

The babe is picked up by the old man and his son, together with gold for its keeping; and the half-eaten remains of poor Antigonus (who has been killed by the bear) are piously committed to the earth by the two shepherds. One is very sorry for Antigonus, but his disappearance from the scene is essential to the after-part of the story.

ACT IV.

Time enters and informs the audience concerning the events of the past fifteen years.

We are told that Leontes grieves for the effects of his rash jealousies.

Some people have wondered why Hermione, who is still alive, should have excluded herself all these years from her husband. Surely, patient Grizzel or Enid might have felt all wifely allegiance to Leontes dissolved by his behavior. Hermione was a queen and mother, as well as a wife. As queen, she had borne degradation; as mother, one child had died through the tyranny of her husband, the other had been cast away. To have condoned all this would have been to lower the character of Hermione. She cannot properly forgive Leontes till one child is restored to her. Remember that if Desdemona - if Imogen - could forgive, they could, through all their wrongs, respect their husbands. The murder of no children lay at Othello's or Posthumus' doors. Hermione as a wife has been repeatedly and publicly insulted. He to whom she gave herself has stooped to baseness and cruelty inconceivable. She knows the inmost. nature of the man. Even if she could bring herself to return to him as his wife, it is doubtful whether she could possibly make him happy. She had failed in the pride of her youth, her beauty, and her unsmirched purity; since he has dissolved the bands that bound her to him, she accepts her release, and in my opinion justly. As to repentance — she has known. him repent a hundred times. Nothing, it seems to me, need constrain her again to take on her his yoke, but the welfare of her child.

Scene 1.

This new part of the play opens with a scene between Polixenes and Camillo. The latter has been the faithful prime councillor of the King of Bohemia these fifteen years. He is getting anxious to return to his own country. "The penitent King" whom he still calls "master" has sent for him, and he thinks he might comfort him in his loneliness. and old age. For Leontes is old now; he was a gray-beard sixteen years before. He can hardly be far short of seventy. But it is now Polixenes' turn to press his guest to stay with him. There is a gentlemanliness and kindliness about Polixenes which are very attractive. "Of that fatal country, Sicily," he says, "prithee speak no more. Its very naming punishes me with the remembrance of that penitent,' as thou callest him, and reconciled king, my brother, whose loss of his most precious queen and children are even now to be fresh-lamented." Then he turns to a family trouble, in which he thinks Camillo may advise him. Prince Florizel absents himself from Court. His father has heard he haunts a shepherd's hut, and that the shepherd has grown rich mysteriously. Camillo helps him in his confidence. The father has not liked to touch on the most delicate point, but Camillo goes straight to it: the shepherd has a daughter of most rare loveliness. "Yes- that is what troubles me," says Polixenes in substance. "Let us disguise ourselves, my best Camillo, and go and investigate this matter for ourselves."

Scene 2.

This next scene is in the road near the cottage of the shepherd. In comes the gypsy scamp Autolycus. He is