She also wrote another letter to the ambassador, desiring that he would remind the king of her dying request and urge him to do her this last right.

What the historian relates, Shakspeare realizes. On the wonderful beauty of Katharine's closing scene we need not dwell, for that requires no illustration. In transferring the sentiments of her letter to her lips, Shakspeare has given them added grace, and pathos, and tenderness, without injuring their truth and simplicity; the feelings, and almost the manner of expression, are Katharine's own. The severe justice with which she draws the character of Wolsey, is extremely characteristic; the benign candor with which she listens to the praise of him "whom living she most hated," is not less so. How beautiful her religious enthusiasm!—the slumber which visits her pillow, as she listens to that sad music she called her knell! her awakening from the vision of celestial joy to find herself still on earth

Spirits of peace where are ye? are ye gone,

And leave me here in wretchedness behind ye?

how unspeakably beautiful! And to consummate all in one final touch of truth and nature, we see that consciousness of her own worth and integrity which had sustained her through all her trials of heart, and that pride of station for which she had contended through long years,—which had become more dear by opposition, and by the perseverance with which she had asserted it,—remaining the last strong feeling upon her mind, to the very last hour of existence,

When I am dead, good wench,

Let me be used with honor;-strew me over
With maiden flowers, that all the world may know
I was a chaste wife to my grave: enbalm me,
Then lay me forth-although unqueen'd, yet like
queen, and daughter to a king, inter me—

A
I can no more-

*

In the epilogue to this play, it is recommended

-To the merciful construction of good women,

For such a one we show'd them

alluding to the character of Queen Katharine.

Shak

;

speare has, in fact, placed before us a queen and a heroine, who in the first place, and above all, is a good woman and I repeat, that in doing so, and in trusting for all his effect to truth and virtue, he has given a sublime proof of his genius and his wisdom,-for which, among many other obligations, we women remain his debtors.

* Written (as the commentators suppose,) not by Shakspeare, but by Ben Johnson.

LADY MACBETH.

IDOUBT Whether the epithet historical can properly apply to the character of Lady Macbeth; for though the subject of the play be taken from history, we never think of her with any reference to historical associations, as we do with regard to Constance, Volumnia, Katharine of Arragon, and others. I remember reading some critique, in which Lady Macbeth was styled the "Scottish queen," and methought the title, as applied to her, sounded like a vulgarism. It appears that the real wife of Macbethshe, who lives only in the obscure record of an obscure age, bore the very unmusical appellation of Graoch, and was instigated to the murder of Duncan, not only by ambition, but by motives of vengeance. She was the granddaughter of Kenith the Fourth, killed in 1003, fighting against Malcolm the Second, the father of Duncan. Macbeth reigned over Scotland from the year 1039 to 1056: -but what is all this to the purpose? The sternly magnificent creation of the poet stands before us independent of all these aids of fancy-she is Lady Macbeth; as such she lives, she reigns, and is immortal in the world to imagination. What earthly title could add to her grandeur? what human record or attestation strengthen our impression of her reality?

Characters in history move before us like a procession of figures in basso relievo: we see one side only, that which the artist chose to exhibit to us; the rest is sunk in the block the same characters in Shakspeare are like the statues cut out of the block, fashioned, finished, tangible in every part: we may consider them under every

aspect, we may examine them on every side. As the classical times, when the garb did not make the man, were peculiarly favorable to the development and delineation of the human form, and have handed down to us the purest models of strength and grace-so the times in which Shakspeare lived, were favorable to the vigorous delineation of natural character. Society was not then one vast conventional masquerade of manners. In his revelations, the accidental circumstances are to the individual character, what the drapery of the antique statue is to the statue itself; it is evident, that, though adapted to each other, and studied relatively, they were also studied separately. We trace through the folds the fine and true proportions of the figure beneath; they seem and are independent of each other to the practised eye, though carved together from the same enduring substance; at once perfectly distinct and eternally inseparable. In history we can but study character in relation to events, to situation and circumstances, which disguise and encumber it we are left to imagine, to infer, what certain people must have been, from the manner in which they have acted or suffered. Shakspeare and nature bring us back to the true order of things; and showing us what the human being is, enable us to judge of the possible as well as the positive result in acting and suffering. Here, instead of judging the individual by his actions, we are enabled to judge of action by a reference to the individual. When we can carry this power into the experience of real life, we shall perhaps be more just to one another, and not consider ourselves aggrieved, because we cannot gather figs from thistles and grapes from thorns.

In the play or poem of Macbeth, the interest of the story is so engrossing, the events so rapid and so appalling, the accessories so sublimely conceived and so skilfully

combined, that it is difficult to detach Lady Macbeth from the dramatic situation, or consider her apart from the terrible associations of our first and earliest impression. As the vulgar idea of a Juliet—that all beautiful and heaven gifted child of the south-is merely a love-sick girl in white satin, so the common-place idea of Lady Macbeth, though endowed with the rarest powers, the loftiest energies, and the profoundest affections, is nothing but a fierce, cruel woman, brandishing a couple of daggers, and exciting her husband to butcher a poor old king.

Even those who reflect more deeply are apt to consider rather the mode in which a certain character is manifested, than the combination of abstract qualities making up that individual human being; so what should be last, is first; effects are mistaken for causes, qualities are confounded with their results, and the perversion of what is essentially good, with the operation of positive evil. Hence it is, that those who can feel and estimate the magnificent conception and poetical development of the character, have overlooked the grand moral lesson it conveys; they forget that the crime of Lady Macbeth terrifies us in proportion as we sympathise with her; and that this sympathy is in proportion to the degree of pride, passion, and intellect we may ourselves possess. It is good to behold and to tremble at the possible result of the noblest faculties uncontrolled or perverted. True it is, that the ambitious women of these civilized times do not murder sleeping kings: but are there therefore no Lady Macbeths in the world? no woman, who, under the influence of a diseased or excited appetite for power or distinction, would sacrifice the happiness of a daughter, the fortunes of a husband; the principles of a son and peril their own souls?

The character of Macbeth is considered as one of the most complex in the whole range of Shakspeare's drama